The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799 - 1837) was a Russian Romantic author born in Moscow who is considered to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin pioneered the use of vernacular speech in his poems and plays, creating a style of storytelling-mixing drama, romance, and satire-associated with Russian literature ever since and greatly influencing later Russian writers. He published his first poem at the age of fourteen, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo. He gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals. In the early 1820s he clashed with the government, which sent him into exile in southern Russia.