About the book: 1972 / This Collected Works and Letters of Saltykov-Shchedrin, in which the experience and materials of the previous edition are critically used, is carried out taking into account the latest achievements of the Soviet Shchedrinology. The collection is the most complete of all existing ones and includes all the currently known works of the writer, both completed and unfinished. The book “Abroad” arose as a result of Saltykov’s trip abroad in the summer-autumn of 1880. It was written in the form of travel essays or travel diary. The idea of ​​“a series of letters relating exclusively to modern times” - “Letters to Auntie” arose in Saltykov immediately after he finished, in the second half of June 1881, printing the book “Abroad” in Otechestvennye Zapiski. In the last two chapters of this work, written under the direct impression of the events of March 1, Saltykov has already begun to develop the questions that were posed to Russian society by the political reality of the period when the country began to enter a new period of reaction, which turned out to be one of the most difficult in the life of Russia. http: //ruslit.traumlibrary.net