“A rather handsome, light traveling carriage on springs rolled into the gates of an inn in a certain provincial capital, the kind of carriage that is favoured by bachelors: retired lieutenant colonels, second captains, landowners possessing a hundred souls or so of serfs — in a word, all those who are called the fair-to-middlin’ sort.”
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was born in Sorochyntsi, Poltava Province in Tsarist Russia, which would now be part of the Ukraine. His earlier works included short stories such as The Overcoat, The Nose and The Diary of A Madman. His later works, including Dead Souls, satirized the political corruption and laziness of government workers and how they abused their positions in Imperialist Russia.