For readers who are studying it for the first time, several essays survey the critical conversation regarding this period, explore its cultural and historical contexts and offer close analytical and comparative reading of key texts. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of the Golden Age of Russian literature can then move onto other essays that explore it in depth through a variety of critical and contextual approaches. Works that may be discussed include, among others, Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace and Anna Karenina, Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers & Sons, Gogol's short works and Dead Souls, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.