Nikolai Leskov — Short Works

The Life of a Peasant Woman is a short novel by Nikolai Leskov, first published in 1863's 7th and 8th issues of Biblioteka dlya chteniya magazine, under the moniker of M. Stebnitsky. It has never been re-issued in its author's lifetime. In 1924 the novel was published in Leningrad by an editor and literary historian Pyotr Bykov in a different version and under the new title, Amour in Lapotochki subtitled: "An attempt at a peasant novel. The new, unpublished version." This publication caused controversy and later its authenticity has been called into question. In the latter Soviet collections the original 1863 Leskov text was used, all the editorial cuts and additions being mentioned in commentaries.

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is an 1865 novella by Nikolai Leskov. It was originally published in Fyodor Dostoevsky's magazine Epoch.

The Amazon is a short novel by Nikolai Leskov, first published in the April 1866 issue of Otechestvennye Zapiski, with a dedication to the artist Mikhail Mikeshin. It was included into the collection Novelets, Sketches and Stories by M.Stebnitsky and later into the Works by N.S. Leskov (1889), in a slightly revised version. The epigraph, "The whole of my life has been a set of lessons, of which my death is but another one," comes from the lyrical drama Lucius (Люций) by Apollon Maykov.

The Sealed Angel is a story by Nikolai Leskov, written in 1872 and first published in the No.1, January 1873 issue of The Russian Messenger. The story concerns a group of Old Believers whose revered icon of an angel is confiscated by officials and sealed with wax.

"The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea", The Tale of the Crosseyed Lefthander from Tula and the Steel Flea or simply Levsha, variously translated as The Lefthander, Lefty, The Steel Flea or The Left-handed Craftsman is a well-known 1881 skaz (story) by Nikolai Leskov. Styled as a folk tale, it tells a story of a left-handed weapons craftsman from Tula who outperformed his English colleagues by providing a clockwork steel flea they'd made with horseshoes and inscriptions on them.