This writer is known to everyone; his works have long been included in the school curriculum, but his biography is known to few. His real name is Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov and his pseudonym is “N. Shchedrin" were firmly united into the surname "Saltykov-Shchedrin", which he never used. In Soviet times, he was considered a revolutionary, an exposer of the “ulcers of autocracy,” although he was a supporter of reforms and a tsarist official who rose to the rank of vice-governor. The book by literary historian Sergei Dmitrenko, with unprecedented objectivity and completeness, describes the creative and personal life of Saltykov (Shchedrin) - a man of amazing talent and enormous hard work, who had many friends and even more enemies, who sincerely loved his country and believed in its future.