Towards a history of reading in modern Russia : about one particular source (readers' letters to writers)

The paper focuses on the meaning of readers' letters to 19-century writers in the context of an on-going project titled "Towards a history of reading in modern Russia". Through an analysis of two major case-studies (Dostoevsky and Tolstoy) the author shows that readers’ letters to authors can help reconstruct a general picture of how literary works were received and of how the various categories of readers practised their reading.