Background
Sophia Aleksandrovna Boborykina was born on June 24, 1845, Moscow, Russian Federation. Her family had noble roots. Her grandfather E.F. Kalmykov was a well-known Moscow icon painter.
The Vaudeville Theatre
The Alexandrinsky Teatre
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
Sophia Aleksandrovna Boborykina was born on June 24, 1845, Moscow, Russian Federation. Her family had noble roots. Her grandfather E.F. Kalmykov was a well-known Moscow icon painter.
In 1864-1865 Sophia Aleksandrovna studied at the Music Academy of Dresden.
Sophia Aleksandrovna lived in Paris since 1866, and that is where her theatre debut took place three years later. It was on the scene of the Vaudeville Theatre. In 1871 she was accepted to the troupe of the Alexandrinsky Teatre, but her career there was unsuccessful. She left the scene to marry the writer P.D. Boborykin in 1872. Since then, her whole life was devoted to assisting in her husband's literary work.
As for her translations, Boborykina's first publication appeared in 1874, it was Turcaret, a comedy by Alain-René Lesage. She started working closely with the editorial Otechestvennye zapisky and published such translations as Mercadet by Honore de Balzac and Mémoires d'un imbécile by Eugène Noël in 1875 and 1876 respectively.
Sophia Aleksandrovna was the first in Russia to translate Paradoxe sur le comédien by Denis Diderot, On ne badine pas avec l'amour by Alfred de Musset, and L'Abbé Jules by Octave Mirbeau, Monsieur et Madame Moloch by Marcel Prévost. In 1875 she tranlated from Russian to French her husband's novel The half of life.
Sophia Aleksandrovna was the author of a few literary works: the essay of memoirs Life abroad (From the Russian's memories), the autobiographical novel All day long, the novel With hard work, etc. While traveling across Germany and France with her husband, she took notes of her observations, dialogues with peasants, shopkeepers, and teachers. As a result, she published three collections of essays: The French village in 1895, Across the German villages in 1899, and Village teachers of France in 1905. She was friends with many Russian and European authors and carried on a correspondence with them.
In 1914, when the war hit, Sophia Aleksandrovna had to leave for Lugano with her ill husband, and could not come back due to war-time conditions. After her husband's death in 1921, Sophia Aleksandrovna lived on the breadline and worked on the systematization of their manuscripts and letters. The list of these records was partially published in 1924.
Sophia Aleksandrovna was married to Pyotr Dmitryevich Boborykin from 1872 till his death in 1821.