“We all came out of Gogol’s “Overcoat,” Russian writers rightly say...” noted the French critic E.-M. de Vogüet in 1885. Few people today would disagree with this statement. How did the story of the stolen overcoat provide Gogol with such an honorable place in literature? Each generation of readers seeks its own answer to this question, discovering for themselves the mysterious, strange, fantastic world of Gogol. This edition publishes three cycles of his stories: “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” (1831–1832) - Gogol’s first collection, which brought him fame and was greeted with delight by A. S. Pushkin; “Mirgorod” (1835), which became an organic continuation of “Evenings”; as well as “Petersburg Tales”, which, although not united by the author into a cycle, were published together in 1842 in his collected works and entered the history of literature as one whole. The publication includes illustrations by artists of the 19th – early 20th centuries: P. M. Boklevsky, V. M. Vasnetsov, D. N. Kardovsky, B. M. Kustodiev, V. E. Makovsky, P. P. Sokolov, K. A Trutovsky and others