The Golicyn History


One thread featured on this blog will be The Golicyn History. In 1889, the Prince N. N. Golicyn published an extremely useful and remarkably comprehensive Bibliographic Dictionary of Russian Women Writers (Библиографический словарь русских писательниц, СПб., Тип. В. С. Балашева, 1889). 



The enormous task of transforming that text – whose dates are sometimes missing or wrong – into a chronological list was begun by Hilde Hoogenboom, and is available to the public on the ever-evolving NEWW Women Writers Virtual Research Environment, run by Suzan van Dijk, et al. While the project of carefully reviewing and updating that list may be awaiting the energy of an inspired student, the list ‘as is’ does offer a detailed and roughly chronological outline of Russian women writers. The Golicyn History thread on this blog will attempt to tackle these writers one by one – in the order in which they were listed on the NEWW site when this project began – and to raise issues relating to them. The Golicyn History entries will be indicated with a three digit number, the first being “001 Marusja Čuraj.” 

 N.B. Since we are following the original list, rather than a subsequent corrected version, some of our writers will be presented out of chronological order. These are indicated with an asterisk (*) to facilitate a later return to the problem of their historical position. Meanwhile, we embrace the sometimes random hop from one writer to another as an opportunity for the occasional surprise.



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