«constantinople Letters»: Issues of Context, Attribution and Interpretation

The article examines a series of anonymous publications united by the Istanbul theme: «Constantinople Letters», «Greek Letters», «Letter from Pera», «Ten Days on the Bosphorus». All these publications, originally contributed to Russkiy Vestnik and Moskovskie Vedomosti and signed with cryptonyms: N., S. N., M., testify to a peculiar «appropriation» and «domestication» of the Oriental space. Various traditions and pretexts that complicate the journalistic text are revealed and studied: travelogues by A. S. Pushkin and Lamartine, as well as fiction by W. Thackeray and Ch. Dickens. An attempt is made to attribute the analyzed works to Eugeny Petrovich Novikov, a writer and a diplomat, who remained in service between 1860 and 1882.