Alexander Ertel
Alexander Ivanovich Ertel , was a Russian novelist and short story writer.
Ertel was born near Voronezh, where his father was a Russified German estate agent. He never completed school, and was largely selfeducated. He published his first collection of stories called Notes from the Steppes in 1883. He was imprisoned in 1884 for his revolutionary ties, and afterwards exiled to Tver for four years. He published a number of novellas and stories in the 1880s and 1890s, including A Greedy Peasant , and the two epic novels The Gardenins , and Change . When The Gardenins was republished in 1908, it featured a preface by Leo Tolstoy, who admired Ertels work.
Source: Wikipedia