This is the first installment in a new edition of Alexander Pushkin's works in the original Russian. Poemy i povesti, ch. 1 (Narrative Poems and Tales, Part 1) presents three narrative poems--Ruslan and Lyudmila, The Prisoner of the Caucasus, and The Fountain of Bakhchisaray--exactly as they appeared in the final published version issued during the poet's lifetime. Edited by David Bethea and Nikita Okhotin, and richly annotated by Oleg Proskurin, this volume is based on the 1835 edition published by A.F. Smirdin; a second volume will be available soon and will include The Gypsies, Count Nulin, Poltava, Little House in Kolomna, and Angelo.
    Like the other volumes planned for this series, Poemy i povesti provides the handsome "artifactual" feel of an original Pushkin text, prior to modernization by Soviet orthographic convention. Recognizing the value of textology as a cornerstone of literary studies, the series seeks a balance among the history of a work's conception and publication, its contextualization and background in literary sources. Future volumes in the series will appear at regular intervals.

Distributed for the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

David Bethea is the Vilas Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the author of Realizing Metaphors: Alexander Pushkin and the Life of the Poet, Khodasevich: His Life and Art, The Shape of Apocalypse in Modern Russian Fiction, and Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile, as well as being the editor of Pushkin Today.