The Telltale Black Baby, or Why Pushkin Began The Blackamoor of Peter the Great but Didn’t Finish It

PUSHKIN BEGAN WRITING his first major attempt at a prose novel at the end of July 1827 at Mikhailovskoe, the estate granted to his great-grandfather Abram Gannibal by the Empress Elizabeth.¹ By the end of August he appears to have finished six chapters of the novel. On September 15 of that year, Pushkin related to Aleksei Vul’f an outline of the projected further development of his prose work in progress. Pushkin gave readings of the completed chapters of the novel in December 1827 and March 1828, but by the spring of 1828 work on the novel appeared to have progressed