4 h 27 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if love arrives just when you are least willing to feel it?
Eugene Onegin leaves fashionable St Petersburg life for a country estate, but boredom follows him. Nearby, the young poet Vladimir Lensky believes in love, friendship and honour. When Onegin meets the Larin sisters, quiet Tatyana falls in love with him and puts her feelings into a letter.
In Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse, a confession of love and a friendship carry more weight than they first seem. Tatyana wants love in return; Onegin guards himself against feeling. Around them are country houses, balls and gossip, while a witty narrator shares memories, jokes and asides as though you sit beside him.
What you’ll discover
- Tatyana's daring letter Meet a quiet reader of novels who finds the courage to speak her heart.
- An answer in the garden Feel the distance between an open heart and a man who holds himself apart.
- A friendship under strain Watch Lensky's faith in friendship meet the danger of a quarrel over something small.
- Russian country life Step among estates, winter customs and household concerns that give the love story its setting.
- A narrator beside you Enjoy a voice that wanders, jokes and remembers within the poem's patterned fourteen-line stanzas.
Who will love it
For readers who love tales of love, pride and missed chances, and anyone drawn to Russian country estates, romantic poets and a witty narrator whose voice moves between laughter and sorrow.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Onegin lives fast and grows bored
- A country estate cannot cure restlessness
- Lensky brings poetry and friendship
- Two sisters, one dreamy and one bright
- Tatyana writes the first letter
- Onegin answers kindly and says no
- A dream, a name day and a dangerous quarrel
- Love, time and the cost of missed chances
- A narrator who talks, and a stanza that sings
Who’s who
- Eugene OneginA young St Petersburg nobleman, bored with fashionable life, who inherits a country estate and guards himself against feeling.
- Tatyana LarinaA quiet, serious country girl raised on novels and folk tales, who gives her heart openly and wants to be loved in return.
- Vladimir LenskyA young poet fresh from Germany, sincere and romantic, who loves Olga and believes in friendship and honour.
- Olga LarinaTatyana's cheerful younger sister, pretty and light-hearted, who is engaged to Lensky and enjoys attention.
- The NarratorA witty poet who calls himself Onegin's friend, tells the story with asides about his own tastes, and clearly loves Tatyana.
- FilipyevnaTatyana's old nurse, who tells her folk tales and helps her send the letter that changes her life.
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Eugene Onegin
by Alexander Pushkin · 1833
Tatyana sends a letter of love to a young nobleman who guards himself against feeling.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 9
Onegin lives fast and grows bored
The poem opens with Eugene Onegin on his way to the country. His uncle is dying, and Onegin must go and sit at the bedside. He grumbles the whole way, wishing the old man would simply be done with dying. Before he learns what awaits him, the narrator stops and tells us how Onegin came to be this kind of young man.
Onegin grew up in St Petersburg in a noble family that had spent more than it owned. A French tutor taught him a little of everything, with no great effort on either side. He learned to dance easily, to speak French, to bow and to flatter. He read some Adam Smith, enough to talk about the wealth of nations at parties, and he knew just enough Latin to quote a line or two.
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What is Eugene Onegin about?
It follows a bored young nobleman, Onegin, who moves to the Russian countryside and meets a poet, Lensky, and a girl, Tatyana. A letter of love, a refusal and a quarrel set their fates, and the poem looks at missed chances.
Why is Eugene Onegin written in verse?
Pushkin chose to write a novel in poetry, using a fourteen line stanza he devised. The form lets the narrator joke, digress and shift tone quickly, and it gives the story a musical, conversational voice.
What is the Onegin stanza?
It is a stanza of fourteen lines in iambic tetrameter with a fixed rhyme scheme of alternating, paired and enclosing rhymes, ending in a couplet. Pushkin created it for this poem, and later poets have imitated it.
The author
Alexander Pushkin
1799–1837 · Russian poet and novelist
Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist. He was born in Moscow in 1799 and died in Saint Petersburg in 1837. He wrote Eugene Onegin between 1823 and 1831. His other works include the play Boris Godunov and the stories The Queen of Spades and The Captain’s Daughter.
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