Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko, the most prolific Russian Empire writer of the late 19th-early 20th century, published more than 250 books; he was widely popular among the general reading public, but had little success with mainstream critics.

His memories of early childhood formed the basis of many of his later books, notably those dealing with the Caucasian Wars (The Forgotten Fortress novel, 1895, Gavryushka's Captivity, 1917).

Nikolay Mikhaylovsky, while giving the author credit for "having some talent" and "fluency of style" criticised him for being too flashy and "ostentatious in attention-grabbing.

Some critics argued that most of Nemirovich-Danchenko's books of the time were hardly novels in the common sense of the word: huge in size (averaging 700 pages each), they were, in effect, just long sequences of scenes, connected not by a plot line, but by the main characters appearing here and there.

Личные воспоминания и впечатления, 1882) featuring Mikhail Skobelev, the legendary Russian Army general and Turkish War hero as its main character, and containing a wealth of priceless documentary and first-hand historic material written in a captivating manner, became widely popular – among the critics too, for a change.

[7] It was general Skobelev who served as a prototype for another well-known Nemirovich-Danchenko novel, The Family of Great Warriors (Семья богатырей).

These books dealt with bank crises, financial machinations, stock exchange speculations, money laundering, the shadowy side of the massive railway boom investments, and the murky world of concessions and joint-stock companies (The Lights on Moors, 1903; Slastyonov’s Millions, 1893; Diamonds Trump!, 1894, The Tsars of Stock Exchange, 1886).

Highly dynamic and full of action, these novels were steeped with murder and suicide, had exuberant and preposterous finales, and were jeered by serious critics as totally farcical.

This flaw was evident even more in Nemirovich-Danchenko's romantic fiction (Two Diaries, 1901, A Woman's Confession, 1889, On Different Roads, 1894), using the adultery theme as a common leitmotif.

His popularity with readers never waned; not long before his emigration in 1921 a Vestnik Literatury reviewer described him as "one of our best stylists" and a "master of poetry in prose" whose "books are invariably among the most in demand in libraries ".