Vasily Narezhny

21 June] 1825, St. Petersburg) was a Russian Imperial writer best known for his satirical depiction of provincial mores in the vein of the 18th-century picaresque novel.

Narezhny's rough, vernacular Russian contrasted sharply with the sensitivity and musicality of the Karamzin school's Gallicized language.

[4] However, his lack of influence also had to do with the immediate suppression of A Russian Gil Blas by the censor; the first three parts were confiscated soon after they appeared and the remaining three were prohibited (the entire work was first published in 1938).

[5] Nicholas Crowe takes a more favorable view than Mirsky, calling Narezhnyi "the inheritor and fine-tuner of that solid 18th-century novel-writing tradition in Russia that established prose as a workable and valid medium":An accomplished writer of novels and short stories alike, he represented the high point of the 18th-century fictional legacy rather than the modes of the rapidly evolving literary environment of the early 19th century in which he happened to find himself working.

For imaginative sweep, wit, satirical acuity, and consummate gifts in the art of story-telling one could, during that period, do worse than turn to Narezhnyi...[6]