Background
Dmitry Girs was born in Taganrog, where his father was chief of quarantine.
Dmitry Girs was born in Taganrog, where his father was chief of quarantine.
In 1843, his family moved to Saint St. Petersburg, where he studied in a military school, graduated from the engineer college, and then served as a field engineer
Girs’s ancestors were of Swedish origin. In 1868 he had to leave the city as punishment for his speech at the funeral ceremony of Dmitri Pisarev. Girs’s first writings were published in 1862 in The Russian Messenger under the pen-name Konstantinov.
In 1868 he published the beginning of his novel Staraia i novaia Rossia (The Old and New Russia) in Otechestvennye zapiski (Homeland Notes).
Although the novel aroused great expectations, it was never finished. Other works by Girs are Na krayu propasti (On the edge of the abyss) in Delo (The deed), 1870.
Kaliforniiskiy rudnik (The California mine) in Otechestvennye zapiski, 1872. Dnevnik notarialnogo pistsa (The diary of a notary scribe), Ibidem (in the same place), 1883.
Avdotya-dvumuzhnitsa (Avdotya the bigamist) in Russkaya mysl" (Russian Thought), 1884.
In 1876 Girs worked in Serbia as a military reporter for Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti (The Street St. Petersburg Gazette) and in 1877 for Severnyi vestnik (The Northern Bulletin). In 1878-1880 Girs published his own newspaper, called Russkaya pravda (Russian Truth), in which he wrote feuilletons under the pen-name Dobro-Glagol. The paper was respected but never enjoyed great success.
lieutenant incurred administrative penalties and was suspended from publishing many times.
Girs’s works Zapiski voiennogo (Notes of a military man) and Kaliforniiskiy rudnik were published in a single volume (Street St. Petersburg, 1872).