He spent a long period abroad in the 1890s, where he met Émile Zola, Edmond de Goncourt and Alphonse Daudet.

He was the author of numerous novels, novellas, short stories, plays, and works on the history of Western European and Russian literature.

His most famous works were the novels Evening Sacrifice (1868), Dealers (1872–1873), Kitay-Gorod (1882), Vasily Tyorkin (1892), Thirst (1898), the story Wiser (1890), and the comedy The Scale (1899).

He explained that the term was borrowed from German culture, where it was used to describe the part of society which is engaged in intellectual activity.

Intellectuals in this sense were representatives of different professional groups, different political beliefs, but with a common spiritual and moral foundation.