History of writing a novel by A.K. Tolstoy "Prince Serebrenni".

Tolstoy started working on Prince Serebrenni in the late 1840s. Several sources reported that in the course of his Kaluga mission alongside senator Davydov, Tolstoy read the novel to Alexandra Smirnova-Rossette and Nikolai Gogol. It was there and then that Gogol told Tolstoy about a folk song "Master Panteley Walks About in the Yard" which has been promptly installed into the plot. According to N. Kolmakov, senator Davydov's senior aide, the novel by this time had been finished. If so, this could apply only to its very first, rough version.

Again, a pause followed and the work resumed in 1859. In a February 4, 1859, letter to his friend and translator Boleslav Markevich Tolstoy wrote: "I've been working upon Serebrenny but failed to finish it, too restless my mind was." Also, in 1859 he wrote to Mikhail Pogodin who was asking for a fragment to be included in the Utro anthology: "My novel still needs a clean-up and not even a fragment can be published in its present state.

Thousands of small things prevented me from starting upon it." In a March 20, 1860 letter, he informed Markevich that the novel was now virtually finished but the second part of it looked much stronger than the first one which needed to be improved.

Prince Serebrenni premiered at a recital party in the Palace in late December 1861. The readings which lasted several days were highly successful and brought the author a book-trinket from Empress consort Maria Aleksandrovna as a personal gift.