Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright and novelist of the Romantic era, considered by many the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Born into the Russian nobility in Moscow, he published his first poem at fifteen and was recognized by the literary establishment by the time he graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum; his controversial poem Ode to Liberty helped lead to his exile by Emperor Alexander I. While under police surveillance he wrote his most famous play, Boris Godunov, and serialized his novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, between 1825 and 1832, before dying from a wound suffered in a duel with his wife's alleged lover.