Excerpt from Liza: A Nest of Nobles<br><br>With the translation of Liza, by W. R. Shedden Ralston, English readers must have made almost their earliest acquaintance with Turgenev, the novelist, the greatest novelist, as some think, of his time. Ralston was another of the British Museum librarians who have done good work as writers and translators. Originally intended for the bar, he gave that up because of his father's lost Indian fortune, spent in an unavailing long-drawn lawsuit to gain certain Scottish estates. Then, entering the Museum, he found Russian to be a language much needed there, and set him self to learn it. His version of Krilofi's Fables appeared in 1868, and next year saw the present volume. During one of his visits to Russia, he made friends with Tur genev, and he brought to his art in translation a sus ceptible ear and a temperament to which the Russian imagination and curious narrative power appealed in a re markable degree.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.