The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin

Arriving in Boldino at the beginning of September 1830 and not yet knowing that he would stay there for three months, Pushkin promises in a letter to Pletnev to prepare "various things" — both prose and poetry. In the very first days of his solitude in Boldino, detaching himself from his main, seemingly, work — from finishing "Eugene Onegin," Pushkin writes the story "The Undertaker" (dated September 9), so that immediately after it he begins the second one ("The Stationmaster," completed on September 14), and then, interspersed with "Onegin," the third one ("The Lady Peasant" — September 20). The beginning was set: in the first three weeks of Pushkin's stay in Boldino, Russian literature was enriched by three stories that sharply broke with the prevailing tradition of Russian prose and led it onto a new path. But only after completing his cycle of five stories does Pushkin begin working on a cycle of tragedies. The second month in Boldino distracted Pushkin with "A House in Kolomna," but following it, two new stories were written: "The Shot" and "The Blizzard."
This debut of Pushkin in prose was not appreciated by his contemporaries, but later generations saw in these tales the beginning of great Russian literature.