“The Staroselskaya Tale” is a historical-and-domestic fictional work by the Soviet writer, historian, and Keeper of the Hermitage, Vladislav Mikhailovich Glinka. The book introduces the reader to the features of provincial life and social changes in 19th-century Russia. Thanks to the author’s professional expertise as a historian, the book meticulously and reliably recreates the atmosphere of a bygone era—details of clothing, interiors, and the subtleties of pre-revolutionary etiquette.
The novella was written in 1948. However, the work’s path to a wide readership proved to be long: as a separate book published by “Soviet Writer,” the novella appeared only forty years later, in 1988 (already after the author’s death).