It was dedicated to Zhukovsky's niece and student Alexandra Andreevna Voeikova (who was the sister of the poet's muse Maria Protasova-Moyer), as a wedding gift to her.

His ballad Lyudmila, written in 1808, is a free adaptation of Lenore which gives the story a Russian setting.

Her friends convince her to participate in the traditional fortune-telling rituals on the eve of Epiphany.

Each stanza has 14 lines with the rhyme scheme AbAbCdCdEEfGGf (masculine capitalized, feminine lowercase) and thus somewhat resembles a sonnet.

Svetlana is mentioned and quoted several times by Alexander Pushkin in his verse novel Eugene Onegin and in the story The Blizzard.