Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov is regarded as one of the foremost masters of Russian prose on the singular basis of A Hero of Our Time, his only novel. Many also consider him Russia’s second-greatest poet after Alexander Pushkin, the subject of Lermontov’s poem “Death of a Poet,” an overnight sensation. Lermontov was poised for even greater literary success when he was killed in a duel at the age of twenty-six.