Gatekeepers, Reception, Reputation Khvoshchinskaia’s career as a poet, according to Praskov’ia

Khvoshchinskaia, began in 1847, when she was twenty-three. A friend of the family arranged to have
a notebook of Khvoshchinskaia’s poetry delivered to Vladimir Zotov (1821–96), then editor of
Literaturnaia gazeta. As discussed in chapter 1, women writers, lacking the entrée into literature that
men enjoyed through salons and universities, found it difficult to make the contacts with men
necessary to get published. Those women writers who, like Khvoshchinskaia, lived far from Moscow
and Saint Petersburg, where the periodic press was concentrated, experienced even more difficulty.
A few months later, Praskov’ia Khvoshchinskaia continues, Zotov, looking for something to put in the
poetry column of the newspaper, read the notebook. He published six of Khvoshchinskaia’s poems in
Literaturnaia gazeta, no. 38 (Sept. 18, 1847) under an effusive note in which the twice italicized
“lady” marked his astonishment (or perhaps his doubt) that a woman could have written this poetry:
Buried under bad poetry sent to us from all corners of verseloving Russia we were very pleasantly
and unexpectedly surprised by the verse delivered to us by a Miss N. D. Khvoshchinskaia. We found
in it much true poetry and warmth of feeling, heated by thought and originality. It is even more
pleasant to acquaint the readers of our newspaper with a new poet because this poet is a lady. We
have not read such wonderful and sonorous verses in Russian for a long time. We sincerely thank
their author in particular on behalf of ourselves and the entire reading public, which no doubt will
justly appreciate the new poetic gift of a lady who commands verse with more ease than many
contemporary men poets have attained.