Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818–1883) was the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe. He witnessed the February Revolution in Paris (1848), and his subsequent connection with reform groups in Russia, along with his sympathetic 1852 eulogy of Nikolai Gogol (who satirized the corrupt bureaucracy of the Russian empire), led to his arrest and one-month imprisonment in St. Petersburg. In 1879 the honorary degree of doctor of civil law was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.
Neville Jason is an award-winning narrator, as well as a television and stage actor. He has earned seven AudioFile Earphones Awards and been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He is a former member of the Old Vic Company, the English Stage Company, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Birmingham Repertory Company. While training at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he was awarded the diction prize by Sir John Gielgud.
