The writer and playwright Mikhail Zagoskin was incredibly famous in his lifetime, and the loud glory of his name thundered throughout the Russian Empire. Zagoskin’s biography does not shine with some particularly bright moments – he was neither a revolutionary nor a public figure. He was who he was – a talented writer, one of the most popular at the time, despite the fact that later his name was forgotten a bit.
Like most children of wealthy parents in that era, as a child, Mikhail received a home education. True, as noted in his biography, rather mediocre in quality. Mikhail Zagoskin’s father, a landowner, constantly bought a lot of books for his son, who early showed a love of reading. Zagoskin’s mother was aunt Nikolai Martynov, the very one who killed the poet Lermontov in a duel. When Mikhail Zagoskin was only 11 years old, he wrote a story and a tragedy. The latter has survived to the present day, but unfortunately the story is not. It is M. Zagoskin who is considered the author of the first historical fiction novel in Russian.
He often wrote with errors, making many mistakes in his manuscripts, which then had to be eliminated by the editors. During the war of 1812, Mikhail Zagoskin enlisted in the militia and took part in one battle, during which he was wounded in the leg. Subsequently, he received the medal “For Bravery”. In addition to prose, Zagoskin also wrote poems and plays, which were staged on the stage of theaters in different cities. Both Mikhail Zagoskin himself and his work “Yuri Miloslavsky” are mentioned in Gogol’s The Inspector General.
The aforementioned “Yuri Miloslavsky” was a great success. Such authorities as A.S. Pushkin and Vasily Zhukovsky were very flattering about him. It was then that Mikhail Zagoskin was first called the “Russian Walter Scott”. Being a well-to-do person, Zagoskin loved to collect a variety of curiosities. In his collection were unprecedented folding fishing rods, and multi-barreled pistols, and much more.
For travel, Mikhail Zagoskin ordered himself a special casket, more like a chest in which everything he needed would fit. But the list of things grew, and he had to order another chest, and later – a special carriage for him, because the new chest did not fit into the usual crew. The famous critic Vissarion Belinsky called the work of M. Zagoskin “Yuri Miloslavsky” the first good Russian novel. During his lifetime, Zagoskin achieved the rank of State Counselor and the position of manager of the Imperial Moscow Theaters. In Penza, there is a street named after Zagoskin.
