Russian Portraits
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in early Soviet history who want supplementary experiential historical material
- Readers who enjoy character sketches and travel-observation essays
- Students of literature or history studying early twentieth-century Western narratives about Russia
- Readers who wish to encounter public-domain historical material in the original English
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking a systematic general history or rigorous academic argumentation
- Researchers expecting abundant data, chronologies, and annotations
- Beginners unfamiliar with early twentieth-century English expression
- Casual readers looking only for light fiction
Reading tips
- First read a brief history of the Soviet revolution to establish a timeline and cast of figures before entering this book.
- Read each portrait as a standalone essay, noting the author's tone and stance as you go.
- Compare with other foreigners' accounts of Russia from the same period to observe differences in perspective.
- Look up unfamiliar figures' backgrounds first; there is no need to finish the book in one sitting.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
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About the author
Clare Sheridan (1885–1970) was a British sculptor and writer active in the artistic and cultural circles of Europe and America from the early to mid-twentieth century, whose life and work spanned both art and literature. Two of her books are available here: the travelogue My American Diary and the portrait collection Russian Portraits. The former records her observations in America in diary form, in a direct and highly personal style; the latter grew out of her 1920 visit to Soviet Russia, where she made busts of several revolutionary leaders, and sketches people through both words and images, combining artistic observation with a sense of historical immediacy. Both works carry a strong personal perspective, written in a light, perceptive manner and attentive to everyday details and character rather than systematic argument. Public information is limited, and her writing is often regarded as a companion to her career as a sculptor and as a record of her times, holding some reference value for art history and travel literature.
