Saltykov, Mikhail Evgrafovich: - Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin, born Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov and known during his lifetime by the pen name Nikolai Shchedrin, was a prominent Russian writer and satirist in the nineteenth century. He spent the majority of his life working as a civil servant in various positions. Following the death of poet Nikolay Nekrasov, he served as editor of the Russian literary magazine Otechestvenniye Zapiski until it was outlawed by the Tsarist authorities in 1884. Saltykov's paintings exemplified both stark reality and humorous grotesque combined with imagination. Saltykov's most famous works, the family chronicle novel The Golovlyov Family (1880) and the political novel The History of a Town (1870), are seminal works of nineteenth-century fiction, and he is considered as a key character in Russian Literary Realism. Mikhail Saltykov was born on January 27, 1826, in the village of Spas-Ugol (modern-day Taldomsky District of the Moscow Oblast of Russia), as one of eight children (five brothers and three sisters) in the large Russian noble family of Yevgraf Vasilievich Saltykov (1776-1851) and Olga Mikhaylovna Saltykova (nee Zabelina; 1801-74). His father belonged to a historic Saltykov noble house descended from a branch of the Morozov boyar dynasty.