First Love (Annotated)

I had annotated this book by adding a summary at the end of the book. First Love is a novella by Ivan Turgenev, first published in 1860.

It is one of his most popular pieces of short fiction. It tells the love story between a 21-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. Background First Love was published in March 1860 in the Reader's Library. Like many of Turgenev's works, this one is highly autobiographical. Indeed, the author claimed it was the most autobiographical of all his works. Here Turgenev is retelling an incident from his own life, his infatuation with a young neighbor in the country, Catherine Shakovskoy (the Zinaida of the novella), an infatuation that lasted until his discovery that Catherine was, in fact, his own father's mistress. Critics were divided. Some criticized its light subject matter that did not touch upon any of the pressing social and political issues of the day. Others condemned the impropriety of that subject matter, namely a father and son in love with the same woman and a young woman who was the mistress of a married man. But it had its many admirers, including the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, who gushed in a letter to Turgenev, "What an exciting girl that Zinochka [Zinaida] is!" Countess Lambert, a close acquaintance of Turgenev, told the author that the Russian emperor himself had read the novella to the empress and been delighted by it. Central characters Vladimir Petrovich – The storyteller, at the time of narration a 16-year-old boy; the protagonist of the story. Zinaida Alexandrovna Zasyekina – The object of Vladimir's affections. Capricious, mocking, and difficult, she is inconsistent in her affections towards her suitors, of which Vladimir is the one to whom she shows (outwardly) the most affection. However, it is the affection of sister to brother rather than between lovers. Pyotr Vasilyevich – Vladimir's father, a stoic symbol of 19th-century masculinity; very 'British' in outlook and apparently unreceptive to emotion but the object of quiet admiration by the son.