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Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1832)

Plot: Onegin, hero of this verse novel, swans about St Petersburg, seducing girls and guzzling champagne. He inherits a plush rural retreat and decides to play the county gent. Tedium prods him to befriend teen poet Lensky. The latter is awash with romanticism and passion for Olga, the local squire's daughter. Onegin meets Olga but prefers her plain sister, Tatyana. Tatyana implodes under the impact of Onegin's vacuous brooding. She writes him a letter of raw adoration. Onegin, though flattered, explains that he is not the marrying kind. Months later, at a party for Tatyana's name day,Onegin flirts with Olga. Lensky, outraged, challenges him to a duel. They fight; Lensky is shot dead. Onegin exits, leaving Tatyana to mourn. Three years on in Moscow, Onegin meets a swish society lovely. It is Tatyana, now married. Smitten, he makes advances; they are elegantly repulsed. Onegin trundles off, disconsolate.

Theme: Pushkin's Russia is busy, exuberant and self-renewing. Although youth should be open to this vitality, paradoxically, it remains swaddled in asphyxiating impersonations of feeling.

Style: Both expansive and terse. Like Byron in Don Juan, the poet participates in his own poem.

Chief strengths: The author's relationship with his creations is consistently elusive. The characters misbehave with all the capricious spontaneity of real people.

Chief weaknesses: Pushkin's oblique wish to exonerate Onegin entails Lensky's sporadic humiliation.

What they thought of it then: There were demands for The Further Adventures of Eugene. Pushkin footled about but the sequel never appeared.

What we think of it now: Critics see their own concerns reflected in each polished stanza. Humanists explore Pushkin's humanity; formalists fulminate about form; ideologues see evidence of socio-political dissent. They all agree that Onegin is the source of the Russian novel.