Ivan Nikitin's early lyrics and, even more, his social origins, have led to comparisons with his predecessor, Aleksei Vasil'evich Kol'tsov, a master of the literary folk song. In addition, Nikitin's realistic poems depicting the lives of the poor--the works for which he is best remembered--are often mentioned in conjunction with the name of his famous contemporary, Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov. Nevertheless, Nikitin remains a figure who resists easy classification. His position as one of only a handful of poets who did not belong to the nobility attracted the attention of some of the more radical literary and social critics of his day--but such attention came with expectations about what a poet-meshchanin (poet-commoner) and a poet-obshchestvennik (civic poet) ought to contribute to a socially relevant literature and was often accompanied by harsh criticism of Nikitin's eclectic talent. At the same time, not merely an impassioned observer, Nikitin saw himself as...