Memoirs

"I cannot see a clean pen without feeling the desire to immediately dip it in ink," Empress Catherine II honestly confessed in her memoirs, which were banned in Tsarist Russia (even Nicholas I first became acquainted with them only after he received a copy kept by Pushkin after the latter's death). It was only in 1865 that Herzen published the empress's memoirs in London, and they became fully available to the domestic reader only at the beginning of the 20th century. To this day, an incredible archive left by Catherine the Great has survived, consisting of dozens of volumes, containing her notes and letters, as well as essays, plays, historical, and philosophical works.
This edition includes the later version of the "Memoirs" (covering the period from 1744 to 1758) as well as the "Selected Letters" of the empress.