Ivan Ivanovich Khemnitser earned a lasting place in the history of Russian literature with less than a hundred verse fables. He gave final form to the genre that Ivan Krylov would later use so successfully, and until the middle of the nineteenth century his fables rivaled those of Krylov in popularity. Khemnitser enjoys a distinction shared by few Russian writers: passages from his fables entered the Russian language as proverbial expressions.

Ironically Khemnitser grew up in a household where only German was spoken. His father, Johann Chemnizer, was born in Saxony and went to Saint Petersburg to serve as an army medic. His service took him to Astrakhan Province, where his son Ivan was born on 5 January 1745. To judge by the awkward German in the memoir he left after his son's death, Johann Chemnizer did not receive much of an education. He nonetheless took every opportunity to provide...