Excerpt from Serf Life in Russia: The Childhood of a Russian Grandmother The pictures of serf life in Russia (as it existed before 1861) collected together in this volume are not only interesting as being what the French would call sensations but are also of psychological value as being the self-revelation of the outwardly wayward, but vibratingly sensitive child soul of a little girl, brought up under almost mediaeval conditions in the middle of the nineteenth century. Old social and economic forms were crumbling away around the child, who played and dreamed, and often revolted, in the garden of the old Russian manor house. The first faint impulses of modern thought, science, and economic outlook were making themselves felt in town and university centres throughout the civilised world. Steam and electricity were alread beginning to under mine stealthily the fortresses of the old order. But Russia herself, throughout all her. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.