Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence , it is usually regarded as complete in the extant form. In the Russian Empire, before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, landowners were entitled to own serfs to farm their land. Serfs were for most purposes considered the... property of the landowner, and could be bought, sold or mortgaged, as any other chattel. To count serfs , the measure word "soul" was used: e.g., "six souls of serfs". The plot of the novel relies on "dead souls" which are still accounted for in property registers.
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| Author: | Nikolai Gogol |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Year published: | 1842 |
| Number of editions: | 24 |