Background
She was born in Odessa in 1902 and moved to Leningrad in 1922.
writer memoirist specialist in literature
She was born in Odessa in 1902 and moved to Leningrad in 1922.
She enrolled there in the State Institute of the History of the Arts, studying with Yury Tynyanov and Boris Eikhenbaum, two major figures of Russian Formalism. She published a number of seminal critical studies, including "Lermontov"s Creative Path" ("Tvorcheskii put" Lermontova," 1940), "Herzen"s "My Past and Thoughts"" (""Byloe i dumy" Gertsena," 1957), On Lyric Poetry ("O lirike," 1964. 2nd exp ed 1974), On Psychological Prose ("O psikhologicheskoi proze," 1971.
2nd rev ed, 1977), and "On the Literary Hero" ("O literaturnom geroe," 1979).
"On Psychological Prose" was published by Princeton University Press in 1991 in an English translation and edition by Judson Rosengrant, and "Blockade Diary" ("Zapiski blokadnogo cheloveka," 1984), her memoir of the siege of Leningrad (8 September 1941 - 27 January 1944), was published by Harvill in 1995 in translation by Alan Myers.