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1952. An elderly English housekeeper lies dying in a North London suburb. She seems unremarkable, except that she is very small and has a Russian surname. She was born Lilian Glassby and according to Stanislavsky was the prototype of the governess Sharlotta Ivanovna in Chekhov’s great play The Cherry Orchard. What is the story of her life? In this novel Harvey Pitcher uncovers her past in the manner of a detective story. This is not, he writes, a novel about the Russian Revolution, but about its impact on ‘the private life of one unusual Englishwoman. It is the story of her love affair with Russia’. As well as being a major British Chekhov scholar, Harvey Pitcher is well known for his pioneering books on the Victorian-Edwardian British in Russia: When Miss Emmie was in Russia, about the adventurous lives of the English governesses before, during and after October 1917, and The Smiths of Moscow, detailing the lives of three generations of a British family in Russia. |
