Istorīi︠a︡ russkoĭ literatury XIX stoli︠e︡tīi︠a︡; kritika, roman, poėzīi︠a︡ i drama. (OCLC #19772129)

This gift volume was missing its title page, but the spine did include the author’s last name (Engel’gardt) and an English translation of the title (“Russian literature”) which narrowed my search somewhat, but not quite enough. An early page of the volume included a dedication to the author’s grandfather (Nikolaĭ Makarov (a lexicographer) and his father Aleksandr Ėngelʹgardt (an author and scientist), which was even more helpful!

A biography of his grandfather’s daughter (his father’s wife) Anna Engelgardt (a writer, publicist, translator, and activist in the Russian women’s movement) mentioned three children, Mikhail (b. 1861), Vera (b. 1863), and Nikolai (b. 1867) all of whom became writers!

Armed with all of this new information, I searched OCLC again and found a record for what I suspected was the title in hand; as a bonus, we had holdings on that record, so I could confirm my suspicions by going to the stacks!

As it turned out, we already have two copies of this set on the shelf, so we will likely not accept this duplicate volume into the collection.