I was then five-and-twenty, -that was a sufficient indication that I had a past, said he, beginning. My own master for some little time, I resolved to travel, -not to complete my education, as they said at the time, but to see the world...

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright.

His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.