Ivan Goncharov
Oblomov
1915 · 328 pages
- Author
- Ivan Goncharov
- Edition
- Translated by C. J. Hogarth; first edition of the first English translation (abridged)
- Published
- London, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1915
- Pages
- 328
- File
- DjVu, 9 MB
- Text search
- yes
- Rights
- public domain
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About the book
Oblomov is Ivan Goncharov’s best-known novel, published in 1859; its famous chapter “Oblomov’s Dream” had appeared on its own ten years earlier. Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a gentle, good-hearted landowner in St Petersburg who can hardly bring himself to get out of bed. His energetic friend Andrei Stolz tries to rouse him, and for a while love for the lively Olga Ilyinskaya seems to wake him up, but in the end he sinks back into the warm, idle comfort he cannot give up.
The novel is both a comedy and a sad study of wasted life, and the critic Nikolai Dobrolyubov soon made the word “Oblomovism” a name for the inertia of the Russian gentry. The word has stayed in the Russian language ever since.
C. J. Hogarth’s version was the first in English. It is somewhat shortened: several early chapters are run together and some minor episodes are left out.
Contents
Tap a chapter to open the book there.
About this edition
First edition of C. J. Hogarth’s translation, published in London by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., at Ruskin House, Museum Street. The title page has no date; its verso reads “First published in 1915”. The publisher’s blurb before the text presents it as the first English translation, and the book was printed by Unwin Brothers at the Gresham Press; advertisements follow the text. The scan comes from a University of Toronto library copy, with its stamps on the verso, and has a searchable text layer.
How to read it
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Source
A scan from the Wikimedia Foundation's open projects. The book is in the public domain: free to read, download and share.