SOURCE: Cronin, Vincent. “The Literary Scene.” In Catherine: Empress of All the Russias, pp. 222-34. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1978.

In the excerpt below, Cronin provides an overview of Catherine's literary career, relating her works to events in both her private and public life, and tracing her influence on other authors.

The improvements in government, growing prosperity and a sense of security which began to make themselves felt by the middle of Catherine's reign had their counterparts in intellectual and artistic achievements. A new spirit of confident experiment stirred, nowhere more strikingly than in literature. Almost all genres of fiction and nonfiction showed new activity and some produced distinguished results. It is possible to speak of a literary flowering at the centre of which, as patron and writer, stood Catherine herself.

It is first necessary to look, once again, at Russia on Catherine's arrival. In the preceding...