A critical look at the Russian gentry from the 1830s to the 1870s, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel The Golovlyovs exposes the insubstantiality of the family as one of the proclaimed bases of Russian social life. In sharp contrast to his contemporaries, including Aksakov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Goncharov, Saltykov-Shchedrin shows the gentry family, as represented by the Golovlyovs, as disintegrating, corrupted by its status and way of life. The book, the sixth in the AATSEEL Critical Companions to Russian Literature series, begins with a brief sketch of Saltykov-Shchedrin's life and literary...