In it he is free from the reproach which was leveled at his later and more ambitious long stories, "The Emigrants" and "The Fishermen." In the latter, for the sake of lengthening the tale, and of enlisting interest by making it conform to the general taste of readers, he made the interest center on a love-story, in which the emotions and procedure were described as being like those in the higher walks of life; and this did not agree with the facts of the case.

But the remainder of the stories are founded on a genuine study of peasant ways and feelings.
Grigorovitch had originally devoted himself to painting, and after 1855 he returned to that profession, but between 1884-1898 he again began to publish stories.
Among the writers who followed Grigorovitch in his studies of peasant life, was Ivan Sergyeevitch Turgeneff (1818-1883), who may be said not only to have produced the most artistic pictures of that sphere ever written by a Russian, but to have summed up in his longer novels devoted to the higher classes, in a manner not to be surpassed, and in a language and style as polished and brilliant as a collection of precious stones--a whole obscure period of changes and unrest.

He was descended from an ancient noble family, and his father served in a cuirassier regiment.

On the family estate in the government of Orel[22] (where, later in life, he laid the scene of his famous "Notes of a Sportsman"), he was well provided with teachers of various nationalities--Russian excepted.

One of his mother's serfs, a man passionately fond of reading, and a great admirer of Kheraskoff, was the first to initiate the boy into Russian literature, with "The Rossiad." In 1834 Turgeneff entered the Moscow University, but soon went to St.Petersburg, and there completed his course in the philological department.