The Diary of the Goncourts

The Goncourt Prize is considered one of the most prestigious literary awards, not only in France. But does everyone know who is behind it? Since 1903, the prize for "creative discovery in prose" has been awarded annually in accordance with... the will of Edmond de Goncourt.
French writers Edmond and Jules Goncourt were pioneers in many respects. Everything we have come to love in French classical literature seems to have started in the novels of the Goncourt brothers or, at least, is described in their diaries (they also established the fashion for diaries), where figures such as Dumas, Balzac, Zola, Herzen, Turgenev, Daudet, Maupassant, Hugo, Flaubert are mentioned...
The diary began publication in France in 1887, and the last, 22nd volume, was released in 1896. Here we reissue the first Russian translation of selected pages of the Diary, published in 1898 by the magazine "Northern Herald".