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Following our publication of his Travels in Italy (Voyage en Italie), our new edition of Théophile Gautier's Travels in Russia (Voyage en Russie) is now available online here. This is the third in our planned series of his major travel writings, which will also include, Belgium, London, and Constantinople.

His travels in Russia, in 1858-59, including visits to St. Petersburgh and Moscow, reveal further aspects of the wide influence achieved by French culture evidenced in all Gautier’s travel writing, and confirm, once more, his passionate interest in all things artistic. He left for Russia in September 1858, and was there until March 1859, the aim being to publish a work on the Art Treasures of Ancient and Modern Russia, illustrated with two hundred heliogravure plates taken from photographs; his companion, the photographer Pierre-Ambroise Richebourg, was to be responsible for these, as instructed by Gautier, who would write the accompanying text. Tsar Alexander II was the patron, and the trip was fully funded by a businessman, Carolus van Raay. Gautier was in St, Petersburg by mid-October 1858, and visited Moscow briefly in early February 1859 before returning to St. Petersburg, and then Paris in late March. Gautier had also agreed, in exchange for six months’ leave, to provide the Moniteur Universel with a series of articles giving his travel impressions, which provided the basis for Voyage en Russie.

He was in Russia again in August and September 1861, with his eldest son Charles-Marie Théophile, known as Toto, and a family friend Olivier Gourjault, a trip which included further visits to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and his visit to Nizhny Novgorod via Tver and the River Volga.

This enhanced translation has been designed to offer maximum compatibility with current search engines. Among other modifications, the proper names of people and places, and the titles given to works of art, have been fully researched, modernised, and expanded; comments in parentheses have been added here and there to provide a reference, or clarify meaning; and minor typographic or factual errors, for example incorrect attributions and dates, in the original text, have been eliminated from this new translation.