Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin, the greatest poem of Russia’s greatest poet. It was begun in 1823, written partly in exile, published serially between 1825 and 1832, and by 1837, the year in which Pushkin was fatally wounded in a duel, already a poem of national significance. Today it’s a classic of 19th-century literature, translated and imitated all over the world, adapted for stage and screen.
At its centre is one of the great love stories, involving the eponymous Onegin, a fatigued dandy, withdrawn from society to the countryside, and Tatyana, younger sister to the fiancée of Onegin’s neighbour and friend, the ardent poet, Lensky.