"Pushkin was the first in Russia to write permanent fiction, the first truly original Russian novelist.... Pushkin's literary prose is rational, analytical, intentionally bald, pruned of all irrelevant ornament, and almost affected in its simplicity....

"The Captain's Daughter was the only work of Pushkin's that had a powerful influence on the next age -- it contains all the essence of what Russian realism was to become -- though it is still a story told in the orthodox manner, as a story should be.