The Monthly Review for Benefit and Entertainment (1755–1764) was the first Russian periodical with a large literary section. Aleksandr P. Sumarokov was one of the most active contributors in the first years, publishing in 1755 one prose work and forty-four poems, extremely diverse in genre and form: six translations of psalms, two solemn odes, one “dithyramb” in honor of Peter the Great, two anacreontic odes, two love poems in Sapphic stanzas (one of them a translation from Sappho), one epistle, two idylls, seven sonnets, one ballad, and one madrigal etc. Only part of the archive of The Monthly Review has been preserved. These are almost all manuscripts printed in the journal in 1755. So, it is possible to compare Sumarokov’s manuscripts with his printed works. Although the quality of work in the printing house of the Russian Academy of Sciences was very high, we could establish various typographical errors: some verses were omitted, meters were sometimes distorted, and occasionally the meaning was lost. Sumarokov clearly did not read the proofs of his publications in the Monthly Review, so his manuscripts in the Archive of the Russian Academy are the best source for an accurate edition of his poetry from 1755.
Konstantin Yu. Lappo-Danilevskii (Wed,) studied this question.