Nikolai Leskov in the context of "Lyceum"

Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, its émigrés, and to Russian-language literature. Major contributors to Russian literature, as well as English for instance, are authors of different ethnic origins, including bilingual writers, such as Kyrgyz novelist Chinghiz Aitmatov. At the same time, Russian-language literature does not include works by authors from the Russian Federation who write exclusively or primarily in the native languages of the indigenous non-Russian ethnic groups in Russia, thus the famous Dagestani poet Rasul Gamzatov is omitted.

The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Early Middle Ages when Old Church Slavonic was introduced as a liturgical language and became used as a literary language. The native Russian vernacular remained the use within oral literature as well as written for decrees, laws, messages, chronicles, military tales, and so on. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an astounding "Golden Age" in poetry, prose and drama. The Romantic movement contributed to a flowering of literary talent: poet Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Mikhail Lermontov was one of the most important poets and novelists. Nikolai Gogol and Ivan Turgenev wrote masterful short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy became internationally renowned. Other important figures were Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Leskov. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century is sometimes called the Silver Age of Russian poetry. The poets most often associated with the "Silver Age" are Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolay Gumilyov, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Marina Tsvetaeva. This era produced novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fyodor Sologub, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Alexander Belyaev, Andrei Bely and Maxim Gorky.

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Russian: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда, Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda) is an 1865 novella by Nikolai Leskov. It was originally published in Fyodor Dostoevsky's magazine Epoch.

Among its themes are the subordinate role expected from women in 19th-century European society, adultery, provincial life (thus drawing comparison with Flaubert's Madame Bovary) and the planning of murder by a woman, hence it having a title inspired by the Shakespearean character Lady Macbeth from his play Macbeth, and echoing the title of Turgenev's story Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District (1859).

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Op. 29 (Russian: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда, romanized: Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda, lit. 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District') is an opera in four acts and nine scenes by Dmitri Shostakovich. The libretto, jointly written by Alexander Preys and the composer, is based on the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov.

Dedicated by Shostakovich to his first wife, physicist Nina Varzar, the roughly 160-minute opera was first performed on 22 January 1934 at the Leningrad Maly Operny, and two days later in Moscow. It incorporates elements of expressionism and verismo, telling the story of a lonely woman in 19th-century Russia who falls in love with one of her husband's workers and is driven to murder.

The Cathedral Folk (Russian: Соборяне, romanized: Soboryane), also translated as The Cathedral Clergy, is a novel by Nikolai Leskov, a series of "romantic chronicles" (as the author called them) of the fictional town of Stargorod. It is his only full-length novel translated into English. It was first published in 1872 in The Russian Messenger magazine and formed a trilogy with Old Years in Plodomasovo (1869) and A Decayed Family (1874).

The Enchanted Wanderer (Очарованный странник) is a skaz-based novel by Nikolai Leskov, first published in Russkiy Mir newspaper in 1873. The protagonist is a Russian wanderer.

"The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea" (Russian: Сказ о тульском косом Левше и о стальной блохе, Skaz o Tulskom kosom Levshe i o stalnoy Blokhe), The Tale of the Crosseyed Lefthander from Tula and the Steel Flea or simply Levsha (Russian: Левша, left-handed), variously translated as The Lefthander, Lefty, The Steel Flea or The Left-handed Craftsman is a well-known 1881 skaz (story) by Nikolai Leskov. Styled as a folk tale, it tells a story of a left-handed weapons craftsman from Tula (traditionally a center of the Russian armaments industry) who outperformed his English colleagues by providing a clockwork steel flea they'd made with horseshoes and inscriptions on them.