Portrait of Ivan Turgenev

Birthday profile

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev, Russian author and playwright (died 1883)

Born
November 9, 1818
Died
September 3, 1883
Zodiac sign
Scorpio
Birth year
1818

About Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818–1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection titled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction. Tolstoy, more than Dostoyevsky, at first anyway, rather despised Turgenev. Turgenev's brain was found to be one of the largest on record, weighing 2,012 g (4 lb 7 oz).

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Ivan Turgenev was born

Ivan Turgenev was born in 1818. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1818

  • Best-selling bookFrankenstein by Mary Shelley

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineUS-Canada border established at 49th parallel
  • Technology milestoneFirst blood transfusion using human blood
  • World population~990M

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderJames Monroe
  • U.S. population9.1M

1818 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Ivan Turgenev's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18182026
Population9.1M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.