Pisemsky, Aleksey Feofilaktovich [key], 1821–81, Russian novelist and playwright. In his realistic descriptions of country life he portrayed the peasant sympathetically. His novel A Thousand Souls (1858, tr. 1959) is the story of an ambitious man who marries the owner of a thousand “souls,” or serfs. His best-known works include the play A Bitter Fate (1859, tr. 1933), a tragic story of the seduction of a peasant's wife by a landowner, and the novels A Love Match and The Doormat.
See study by C. A. Moser (1969).
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