Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow on June 6 or 7, 1799, historical sources recording both dates, and lived as a citizen of the Russian Empire throughout his life. He received his formal education at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Both Russian and French were languages he used in his work, a range of expression that runs through his output across several decades.

Pushkin worked in a notably wide variety of forms. He was a poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, librettist, translator, literary critic, and opinion journalist, and his career was associated with the Romantic movement. His writing in Russian includes works that move across verse, prose fiction, and drama, reflecting the breadth of his engagement with literary form.

Among the works he produced are the poem "The Prophet," the narrative poem "Ruslan and Ludmila," and the verse novel "Eugene Onegin." His dramatic writing includes the play "Boris Godunov," and his prose fiction includes the novel "The Captain's Daughter." He also wrote "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish" and "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel," extending his output further across different modes of composition.

Pushkin died on February 10, 1837, in Saint Petersburg. His body of work spans poetry, prose fiction, drama, the folk tale, literary criticism, the libretto, and the essay, a range that reflects the many forms in which he chose to write during his lifetime.