Letters of a Russian Traveler

work by Karamzin

Also known as: “Pisma russkogo puteshestvennika”

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June 30, 2026

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Letters of a Russian Traveler is a significant work by Nikolay Karamzin, a prominent Russian historian, poet, and journalist. Written in a self-revealing style influenced by authors like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, these letters describe Karamzin's impressions from his extensive travels in western Europe between 1789 and 1790.1

Published in Moskovsky zhurnal (Moscow Journal) in 1791–92, the Letters played a crucial role in introducing the sentimentalist literary style, popular in western Europe at the time, to Russia. This work is considered one of the earliest documents in the development of Russian Romanticism. Karamzin's contribution extended to the Russian literary language, as he aimed to make written Russian more accessible and closer to educated speech.123

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Nikolay Mikhaylovich Karamzin
…described his impressions in his Pisma russkogo puteshestvennika Letters of a Russian Traveller, 1789–1790), the most important of his contributions to a monthly review, Moskovsky zhurnal (1791–92; “Moscow Journal”), that he founded on his return. Written in a self-revealing style influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Laurence Sterne, the “Letters” helped…
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…described his impressions in his Pisma russkogo puteshestvennika Letters of a Russian Traveller, 1789–1790), the most important of his contributions to a monthly review, Moskovsky zhurnal (1791–92; “Moscow Journal”), that he founded on his return. Written in a self-revealing style influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Laurence Sterne, the “Letters” helped…
Read More

nonfictional prose
Travel and epistolary literature
, Letters of a Russian Traveler, 1789–1790, 1957) by Nikolay Karamzin is one of the earliest documents in the development of Russian Romanticism. Ivan Goncharov (1812–91), the Russian novelist who stubbornly limited his fiction to his own geographical province, recorded in Frigate Pallas his experience of…
Read More
, Letters of a Russian Traveler, 1789–1790, 1957) by Nikolay Karamzin is one of the earliest documents in the development of Russian Romanticism. Ivan Goncharov (1812–91), the Russian novelist who stubbornly limited his fiction to his own geographical province, recorded in Frigate Pallas his experience of…
Read More