““The Slums of St. Petersburg” is a huge success: everyone is eager to read this wonderful novel, they sign up for libraries in a week; everyone is finally enchanted and delighted. In one gray piece of paper—we do not give the title, precisely because it is probably unknown to our readers—it is even announced that Mr. Krestovsky’s novel is a work of high artistic merit and will die only along with Russian literature. There is no doubt that this praise is too zealous and that Russian literature is not in danger of dying in such a community. But be that as it may, the novel is read, leading to the admiration of the capital, provincial and district ladies and young ladies and their official admirers and legal spouses. All this shows that the novel by Mr. V. Krestovsky is, if not remarkable, then significant...” The work is given in the pre-reform alphabet.