The actor Prov Sadovsky, who described the comedy as a 'revelation', started to recite fragments of it, notably in the Countess Rostopchina's salon, frequented by the young authors like Boris Almazov, Nikolai Berg, Lev Mei and Yevgeny Edelson, Ostrovsky's friends from his university years.

[13] The so-called "Ostrovsky circle" united many of his non-literary friends too, among them actor Prov Sadovsky, musician and folklorist Terty Filippov, merchant Ivan Shanin, shoe-maker Sergey Volkov, teacher Dyakov and Ioasaf Zheleznov, a Cossack from the Urals, all attracted by the idea of Russian national revival (narodnost).

'The Taming of an Evil Wife') was banned as well: the censor Nordstrom found more than one hundred "rude" words and phrases in it and declared the translation "true to the spirit of the original, quite indecent and totally unacceptable for the Russian theatre".

[20] Censors gave their permission only after six months, but mangled the text in such a way that Ostrovsky lost all interest and asked the Maly inspector Alexey Verstovsky to forget about it and wait for the publication of the next play which he'd been working on already.

Poverty is No Vice, reproducing the atmosphere of the old Russian folk carnival, svyatki, lacked the Bankrupt's social awareness, but highlighted the conflict between the Slavophiles and Westernizers, the latter satirized by the author.

[19] Ostrovsky's rise to fame in both major cities was quick, but a serious opposition has already formed, notably among the Moscow actors, including Mikhail Shchepkin, Dmitry Lensky, Sergey Shumsky and Ivan Samarin.

He shifted still closer to the Slavophile doctrine with his next play, Don't Live as You Like (Не живи, как хочется, 1854), portraying the Maslenitsa pagan folk carnival, as celebrated in the 18th century Moscow.

In December 1855 he finished Hangover at Somebody Else's Feast (В чужом пиру похмелье) featuring a noble old teacher Ivanov as the main character and also Tit Titych, a boorish type of a family dictator for whom Ostrovsky coined the term 'samodur' which caught on instantly.

[19] Nikolai Nekrasov's team has long been discussing the prospects of tempting Ostrovsky from Moskvityanin over to Sovremennik, and in late 1855 he made a trip to Saint Petersburg to spend most of his time with the authors of that magazine, striking friendship with the young Leo Tolstoy.

Ostrovsky (who had to ask for special permission to be added as a volunteer to the list of eight) travelled from the Volga River's beginnings down to Nizhny Novgorod and, apart from collecting the information requested, compiled a dictionary of local terms concerning navigation, shipbuilding and fishery.

In May 1856, as the allegations of plagiarism have been made against him in both major cities, based upon his ex-co-author Gorev's accusations, Ostrovsky had to provide his own account of the history of the Family Affair for Moskovsky Vestnik and Sovremennik.

Nekrasov supported him; besides, the Russian press' interest in Gorev died out the moment he published his own play Here and There (Сплошь да рядом, Otechestvennye Zapiski, No.56, 1856), to disastrous effect.

Despite urges from Ivan Panaev to start writing, he returned to Upper Volga in the spring of 1857 and resumed his journey, visiting Rybinsk, Uglich and Nizhny Novgorod in the summer.

[21] The play had nothing to do with the radical ideas propagated by Sovremennik, but by this time, according to Lakshin, Ostrovsky had developed a different approach to his art: "Would it be worthwhile to wage wars against bribe-takers when they are only part of the way of life where the corruption serves for a hidden mechanism?

It was banned from being staged on 23 October of the same year by Alexander Timashev after a censor in his report posed a question: "Should we indeed give way to a play showing such immorality in Russian landowners' daily life?

Censored by none other than Ivan Goncharov (who helped to get the Family Affair into the collection), it inspired Nikolai Dobrolyubov to write the first of his two famous essays, hailing Ostrovsky as "a ray of light in the realm of darkness."

[13][19] In 1860 came out another play inspired by Ostrovsky's Volga voyage, The Storm, a tragic story of unhappily married Katerina, dominated by the motif of impending hurricane which never comes, the latter interpreted by Dobrolyubov as a metaphor for the social change that the Russian society was now badly in need of.

[citation needed] To help the play overcome the censorial barrier Ostrovsky made a trip to the capital and had hard time trying to put it to the censor Nordstrom that Kabanikha (Katerina's vile mother-in-law) was not some caricature of the late Tsar Nikolai I.

[19] In 1861 Ostrovsky finished Whatever You Look for, You'll Find (За чем пойдёшь, то и найдёшь), the final part of the Balzaminov trilogy (praised among others by Dostoyevsky), and the historical drama in verse, Kozma Zakharyich Minin-Sukhoruk, which took him six years to write.

[19] In the spring of 1862 Ostrovsky visited Germany, Austria, Italy, France and England, and returned with the acute feeling of the contrast between the two different time planes that Russia and Europe were living on.

In August 1862 he returned to Russia full of new ideas and by the end of the year finished Sin and Sorrow Are Common to All (Грех да беда на кого не живёт).

After the much-mangled Minin has found its way back to the Imperial Theatres' stage, Ostrovsky followed on with more historical dramas: Voyevoda (1866), The False Dmitry and Vasily Shuisky (1866) and Tushino (1867).

He built a creamery, set up a garden, and even though soon it became clear that this new way of life won't make him any richer, it was here that Ostrovsky spent his happiest days, receiving guests and enjoying bouts of inspiration for new plays.

[19] Taking cues from his 'worst enemy' operetta which came from France to conquer Petersburg and drive Ostrovsky's plays from theatre repertoires, he wrote "Ivan-tsarevich", an ironic fairytale, its Russian folklore plot mixed with modern parody and farce.

The lack of finance forced Ostrovsky to cancel the project, but the idea was soon revived in Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man, a pamphlet written in contemporary language but set in Moscow of the old times.

Occasionally the publication preceded the premiere: such was the case with The Forest (Лес, 1871), the story of actors travelling from Vologda to Kerch which satirised the backwardness of the Russian province of the time.

[19] Now visiting Petersburg regularly, Ostrovsky was enjoying the parties Nekrasov staged in a fashion of Sovremennik happenings, but for all the thrills of meeting people like Gleb Uspensky and Nikolai Mikhailovsky, in the capital he felt uneasy.

While in the old days Ostrovsky was criticised for being too epic and paying little attention to form, Late Love (Поздняя любовь, 1873) and Wolves and Sheep (Волки и овцы, 1875), with their perfect inner mechanism of action and technical gloss, were seen as too "French-like in structure."

[19] In 1874 Ostrovsky co-founded The Society of Russian Dramatic Art and Opera Composers which dealt mostly with legal issues and provided financial support for the authors writing for theatre.

Mikhail Ostrovsky, now one of Alexander's ministers and a member of the State Council of Imperial Russia, mentioned his brother's financial difficulties to the Tsar and the problem was solved in a minute.