Nikolay Nikolaevich Verevkin was a Russian prose writer and poet, whose works are published under the pseudonym Rakhmanny. He was known for his novels of secular metropolitan and provincial life.
Background
Nikolay Nikolaevich Verevkin was born on September 21, 1811, in the family of the Moscow commandant of Lieutenant General Nikolai Nikitich Verevkin in 1811. His father came from a family of a landowner in the Oryol Governorate. In addition to Nikolai, the family had seven more children: Fedor, Mikhail, Alexander, Vladimir, Sergey, Alexandra, and Olga.
Career
Nikolay Nikolaevich served in the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. On April 19, 1831, he was promoted to praporshchik, and on October 7, 1833 he was reduced to the ranks of the Nevsky Naval Regiment for participating in a duel with a fatal outcome for a duel with V.G. Voeikov because of V.I. Bukharina (married Annenkova). In 1835, he was pardoned and promoted to sergeant.
At the same time, Nikolay Nikolaevich began to write novels, which he published under the pseudonym Rakhmanny in the most popular magazine of the era, Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya, edited by O.I. Senkovsky. In particular, in its volume 25 Verevkin’s novel Katenka was published. It was an ordinary secular story depicting the ideal, in the author’s opinion, feminine character: Katenka was a young provincial woman, who was full of passion for a dandy, who was not worthy of her. In the same magazine, the novels Coquette (1836, volume 18) and One of Two (1839, v.19) were published.
In his works, Nikolay Nikolaevich denounced the immorality of secular provincial life, explaining this by the "harmful" influence of French literature. The novel The Woman Writer (1837, volume 23), directed against female emancipation, was an open rebuke to women engaged in literary work, which, from the author’s point of view, was an ambitious and destructive whim that invariably draws a woman into the abyss of vice.
Nikolay Nikolaevich was also published in periodicals with epigone romantic poems Poem to General I.N. Skobelev (1833), Capture of Warsaw (1831), Lancers (1834), Farewell to Moscow (1837). His works Morning Dream, Quaestor, and others were posthumously published in 1839.
Nikolay Nikolaevich died in Saint Petersburg at the age of 25 from galloping consumption before he could start a family.