Discovering Russian intellectual history in Russian and European literature

This episode of New Work in Intellectual History highlights the interplay of Russian and European literary writings with Russian intellectual and cultural history. In the first part of the interview, Frances talks about her book Writing History in Late Imperial Russia: Scholarship and the Literary Canon, published in 2019 with Bloomsbury Publishing. Along the historical work of Timofei Granovskii, Vasilii Klyuchevskii, and Ivan Grevs, the volume explores the influences of literature on the development of Russian historiography in late Imperial Russia. In the second part of the interview, Frances introduces her current work on the depiction of Russia in the writings of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and the author’s personal encounters and relationships with Russians. 

Dr Frances Nethercott is a researcher at the School of History at the University of St Andrews. Her research focusses on Russian intellectual and cultural history from the eighteenth century to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its immediate aftermath.