Highlighting the problem of immense social injustice in Russia, it elicited high praise from, among others, Alexander Pushkin (who described it as "the first piece of Russian literature worth sacrificing your supper for"), Pyotr Chaadayev and Vissarion Belinsky.

One influential detractor proved to be Tsar Nicholas I, who banned Three Novellas from being re-issued, for its "ideas and aims [being] quite horrible"[3] and in his written resolution ominously hinted that "this author would do much better using his talent for describing the nature of the Caucasus.

He authored several vaudevilles, numerous essays and critical articles, as well as the book On the Sources and the Forms of the Russian Fable-writing (Об источниках и формах русского баснословия, 1859).

The next piece of writing that (according to the literary historian Leonid Krupchanov) "made the whole of educated Russia talk about it" was his set of Four Letters to N.V. Gogol, published originally by Moskovskiye Vedomosti (Nos.

28, 38 and 46, 1847), criticizing the "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" which shocked many people with the new tone of religious righteousness and didacticism the great writer had adopted in it.