This work is part of the Russian realist tradition in that the narrator is usually an uncommitted observer of the people he meets.

[citation needed] Turgenev based many of these short stories on his own observations while hunting at his mother's estate at Spasskoye, where he learned of the abuse of the peasants and the injustices of the Russian system that constrained them.

The work as a whole actually led to Turgenev's house arrest (part of the reason, the other being his epitaph to Nikolai Gogol) at Spasskoye.

Story of two peasants one who is extremely thrifty, and the other an idealist, both of whom work for a petty landowner named Polutykin.

The separation of the two peasants plays a big role in later works by the author, as he explained in a speech given in 1860 where he talks about the dichotomy of his "Hamlet-like" and "Quixotic" characters.

Struck with fever in a small village, the narrator is visited by a district doctor who tells him a story of how he fell in love with a dying girl.

The landowner tells stories about his and the narrator's ancestors, other nobles of the area, and the social ills of serfdom.

Yermolay and the narrator go hunting and meet up with Old Knot, an old peasant who is the local fisherman and has held several ridiculous positions in the area.

The group goes hunting in the lake with a pretentious hunter named Vladimir, sink the boat and then wade to shore filthy after great difficulty.

The opening of this story begins with a highly stylized and poetic depiction of the beauty of the countryside during the day.

There he meets Kasyan, a fifty-year-old dwarf who lives in the village and who belongs to some unnamed religious sect.

At night in a droshky, the narrator comes across a man, Foma, in the forest who watches over his landowner's property so peasants don't steal wood.

The narrator tries to buy the peasant's wood so he can be set free, and though they fight at first, Foma eventually agrees and pushes the man out the door.

Of particular interest is the lieutenant Khlopakov, who uses catch phrases out of context regardless if they sound strange, which amuses his friend Zhukov.

The narrator looks at horses and decides to purchase one, which ends up being lame but he gives up trying to get his money back for it when he realizes the seller's scheme.

He eventually gains the interest of Pyotr Benevolensky, a local collegiate counsellor who is a minor acquaintance of Tatyana, who then takes him to St. Petersburg to be trained in art.

He is fat and annoying and spends his time poorly singing words to songs written by Glinka.

They find the trees in the area dying with many fallen onto the ground because of a terrible frost (this is an actual event from Russia in 1840).

While at a post, the narrator meets a lower, uneducated landowner named Karataev who has lost his land because of an IOU.

In this story the narrator spends the evening at a party of a landowner named Alexander G. Here Turgenev gives excellent descriptions and parodies of the nobility.

His friend, Nedopyuskin, became close to him when the former saved him from a crowd of nobles who were tormenting him for being the inheritor of an estate despite the fact that he was so completely devoid of any bit of notoriety for anything.

The two bachelors became the best of friends and live together at Unsleepy Hollow in peaceful tranquility in spite of the disrepair of the area.

He begins to realize that the horse is not truly Malek Adel but one that looks like it and in despair he eventually shoots the animal in the head and stays in his bed afterwards.

Here, the narrator comes back to his home estate to find a beautiful servant named Lukeria in a horrible state.

After falling from a porch she succumbs to an unknown digestive disorder (not explicitly stated, but implied) that reduces her to an unmoving, skeletal figure.

In this story Yermolay and the narrator find they are almost out of shot, so they decide to go to Tula to get more and fetch a peasant named Filofey.

The narrator and Filofey are relieved and joke with each other about the event, but learn later on that on that very night a merchant was killed on the road and had his carriage stolen.

Here, Turgenev gives the readers detailed and beautiful descriptions of the hunter's life, ending the collection.

Frank O'Connor wrote[2] A Sportsman's Sketches may well be the greatest book of short stories ever written.

Vladimir Nabokov wrote[3] Turgenev's plastic musical flowing prose was but one of the reasons that brought him immediate fame, for at least as much interest was contributed by the special subject of these stories.