Great Russian novelist, dramatist, satirist, founder of the so-called critical realism in Russian literature, best-known for his novel MERTVYE DUSHI I-II (1842, Dead Souls). Gogol's prose is characterized by imaginative power and linguistic playfulness. As an exposer of the defects of human character Gogol could be called the Hieronymus Bosch of Russian literature. 

"I am destined by the mysterious powers to walk hand in hand with my strange heroes, viewing life in all its immensity as it rushes past me, viewing it through laughter seen by the world and tears unseen and unknown by it."

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born in the Mirgorod district of the Ukraine in 1809. His early life was spent on his father's country estate. Gogol's father was also a writer; his works, many of which were written for the Ukrainian puppet theater, are in Ukrainian, and he is classed as a Ukrainian writer. His son, however, decided to write in Russian. Nikolai Gogol moved to St. Petersburg in 1828 with the intention of becoming a full-time professional writer. His first published work, a long narrative in verse, was received with indifference by the critics, and the sensitive Gogol fled from Russia in shame. When he returned from Europe in 1829, Gogol first tried to find work as an actor, but was eventually forced to take a minor post in the civil service to support himself. His experiences in the government bureaucracy are reflected in some of his later stories, especially "The Nose" and "The Overcoat."

Gogol's first important literary work was published in two volumes in 1831 and 1832. It is a collection of short stories called Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. (Gogol had greatly admired Pushkin, and he used in this work the same narrative device as Pushkin had in Tales of Belkin.) These stories promoted Gogol from obscurity to a position as one of the nation's leading young writers. After an abortive career change to university teaching, Gogol returned to literature in 1835 with Mirgorod, a collection of stories with Ukrainian background. Over the next seven years, Gogol published a number of stories with a St. Petersburg setting, the last in 1842 being Gogol's most famous story, "The Overcoat."

St. Petersburg Stories (1835) examined disorders of mind and social relationships. 'The Nose' was about a man who loses his nose and which tries to live its own life. In 'Nevsky Prospect' a talented artist falls in love with a tender poetic beauty who turns out to be a prostitute and commits suicide when his dreams are shattered. 'The Diary of a Madman' asked why is it that "all the best things in life, they all go to the Equerries or the generals?" 'The Overcoat' contrasted humility and meekness with the rudeness of the 'important personage'.

Gogol published in 1836 several stories in Pushkin's journal Sovremennik, and in the same year appeared his famous play, The Inspector General. It told a simple tale of a young civil servant, Khlestakov, who finds himself stranded in a small provincial town. By mistake, he is taken by the local officials to be a government inspector, who is visiting their province incognito. Khlestakov happily adapts to his new role and exploits the situation. His true identity is revealed but then arrives the real inspector. Gogol masterfully creates with a few words people, places, things, and lets them disappear in the flow of the story. Vladimir Nabokov wrote: "Who is that unfortunate bather, steadily and uncannily growing, adding weight, fattening himself on the marrow of a metaphor? We never shall know - but he almost managed to gain a footing."

Its first stage production was in St Petersburg, given in the presence of the tsar. The tsar, as he left his box after the première, dropped the comment: "Hmm, what a play! Gets at everyone, and most of all at me!" Gogol, who was always sensitive about reaction to his work, fled Russia for Western Europe. He visited Germany, Switzerland, and France and settled then in Rome. He also made a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1848.

In Rome Gogol wrote his major work, The Dead Souls. Gogol claimed that the story was suggested by Pushkin in a conversation in 1835. It depicted the adventures Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, who arrives in a provincial town to buy 'dead souls', dead serfs. By selling these 'souls' with a cheaply-bought lands, Chichikov planned to make a huge profit. He meets local landowners and departs the in a hurry, when rumors start spread about him. During the last decade of his life, Gogol struggled to continue the story and depict Chichikov's fall and redemption.

Except for a short visits to Russia in 1839-40 and 1841-42, Gogol was abroad for twelve years. The first edition of Gogol's collected works was published in 1842 . It made him one of the most popular Russian writers. Two years before his return, Gogol had published Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (1847), in which he upheld the autocratic tsarist regime and the patriarchal Russian way of life. The book arose disappointment among radicals who had seen Gogol's works as examples of social criticism.

In his later life Gogol came under influence of a fanatical priest, Father Konstantinovskii, and burned sequels for Dead Souls, just 10 days before he died on the verge of madness on the 4th of March 1852. Gogol had refused to take any food and various remedies were employed to make him eat - spirits were poured over his head.