While working at the Academy of Arts' chancellery, Grigorovich joined the close circle of actors, writers and scriptwriters.
Soon he started writing himself, and made several translations of French vaudevilles (The Inheritance, Champaigne and Opium, both 1843) into Russian.
Nekrasov noticed his first published original short stories, "Theatre Carriage" (1844) and "A Doggie" (1845), both bearing strong Gogol influence, and invited him to take part in the almanac The Physiology of Saint Petersburg he was working upon at the time.
Grigorovich's contribution to it, a detailed study of the life of the travelling musicians of the city called St. Petersburg Organ Grinders (1845), was praised by the influential critic Vissarion Belinsky, to whom Nekrasov soon introduced him personally.

In the mid-1840s, Grigorovich, now a journalist, specializing in sketches for Literaturnaya Gazeta and theatre feuilletons for Severnaya Ptchela, renewed his friendship with Dostoyevsky who in 1846 read to him his first novel Poor Folk.
Greatly impressed, Grigorovich took the manuscript to Nekrasov, who promptly published it.

Also in 1846, Andrey Krayevsky's Otechestvennye Zapiski (Nekrasov, who'd received the manuscript first, somehow gave it a miss and then forgot all about it) published Grigorovich's short novel The Village.
Influenced by Dickens's Oliver Twist but based on a real life story of a peasant woman (from the village which belonged to his mother) who'd been forcefully married and then beaten by her husband to death, the novel became one of the first in Russian literature to strongly condemn the system of serfdom and "the first attempt in the history of our literature to get closer to real people's life," according to Ivan Turgenev.

Grigorovich's second short novel Anton Goremyka (Luckless Anton, 1847), promptly published this time by Sovremennik, made the author famous. "
Not a single Russian novel has yet brought upon me such an impression of horrible, damning doom," Belinsky confided in a letter to critic Vasily Botkin.
The realistic treatment of the life of Russian peasants in these two novels was praised by fellow writers Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Leo Tolstoy among others, and had a considerable impact on the writing of that period. "
There'd be not a single educated man in those times and in the years to come who'd read Luckless Anton without tears of passion and hatred, damning horrors of serfdom," wrote Pyotr Kropotkin.
Anton Goremyka was included into the list of the "most dangerous publications of the year," alongside articles by Belinsky and Alexander Hertzen, by the Special Literature and Publishing Committee.

In the late 1840 - early 1850s Grigorovich's fame started to wane.
Partly, it got eclipsed by the publication of Ivan Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, but also, his own works of the so-called 'seven years of reaction', 1848-1855 period were not quite up to the standard set by his first two masterpieces.
Highlighting the brighter sides of the life of the Russian rural community of the time, they were closer to liberal doctrines then to the radical views of Nikolai Chernyshevsky who was gaining more and more influence in Sovremennik.
Several satirical short stories of this period ("Adventures of Nakatov", "Short Term Wealth", "Svistulkin") could hardly be called in any way subversive.
The short novel Four Seasons (1849) has been described as "a kind of simplistic Russian low-life idyll" by the author himself. "
Things are as bad as they've never been.
What with censorship being now so fierce, whatever I'd choose to publish might get me into trouble," Grigorovich complained in an 1850 letter.

Grigorovich's epic, sprawling novel Cart-Tracks (Prosyolochnye Dorogi, 1852) with its gallery of social parasites came under criticism for being overblown and derivative, Gogol's Dead Souls considered the obvious point of reference.
Better received was his The Fishermen (Rybaki, 1853) novel, one of the earliest works of Russian literature pointing at the emergence of kulak (rich, exploitative peasant) in the Russian rural envir
While working at the Academy of Arts' chancellery, Grigorovich joined the close circle of actors, writers and scriptwriters. Soon he started writing himself, and made several translations of French vaudevilles (The Inheritance, Champaigne and Opium, both 1843) into Russian. Nekrasov noticed his first published original short stories, "Theatre Carriage" (1844) and "A Doggie" (1845), both bearing strong Gogol influence, and invited him to take part in the almanac The Physiology of Saint Petersburg he was working upon at the time. Grigorovich's contribution to it, a detailed study of the life of the travelling musicians of the city called St. Petersburg Organ Grinders (1845), was praised by the influential critic Vissarion Belinsky, to whom Nekrasov soon introduced him personally.
In the mid-1840s, Grigorovich, now a journalist, specializing in sketches for Literaturnaya Gazeta and theatre feuilletons for Severnaya Ptchela, renewed his friendship with Dostoyevsky who in 1846 read to him his first novel Poor Folk. Greatly impressed, Grigorovich took the manuscript to Nekrasov, who promptly published it.
Also in 1846, Andrey Krayevsky's Otechestvennye Zapiski (Nekrasov, who'd received the manuscript first, somehow gave it a miss and then forgot all about it) published Grigorovich's short novel The Village. Influenced by Dickens's Oliver Twist but based on a real life story of a peasant woman (from the village which belonged to his mother) who'd been forcefully married and then beaten by her husband to death, the novel became one of the first in Russian literature to strongly condemn the system of serfdom and "the first attempt in the history of our literature to get closer to real people's life," according to Ivan Turgenev.
Grigorovich's second short novel Anton Goremyka (Luckless Anton, 1847), promptly published this time by Sovremennik, made the author famous. "Not a single Russian novel has yet brought upon me such an impression of horrible, damning doom," Belinsky confided in a letter to critic Vasily Botkin. The realistic treatment of the life of Russian peasants in these two novels was praised by fellow writers Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Leo Tolstoy among others, and had a considerable impact on the writing of that period. "There'd be not a single educated man in those times and in the years to come who'd read Luckless Anton without tears of passion and hatred, damning horrors of serfdom," wrote Pyotr Kropotkin. Anton Goremyka was included into the list of the "most dangerous publications of the year," alongside articles by Belinsky and Alexander Hertzen, by the Special Literature and Publishing Committee.
In the late 1840 - early 1850s Grigorovich's fame started to wane. Partly, it got eclipsed by the publication of Ivan Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, but also, his own works of the so-called 'seven years of reaction', 1848-1855 period were not quite up to the standard set by his first two masterpieces. Highlighting the brighter sides of the life of the Russian rural community of the time, they were closer to liberal doctrines then to the radical views of Nikolai Chernyshevsky who was gaining more and more influence in Sovremennik. Several satirical short stories of this period ("Adventures of Nakatov", "Short Term Wealth", "Svistulkin") could hardly be called in any way subversive. The short novel Four Seasons (1849) has been described as "a kind of simplistic Russian low-life idyll" by the author himself. "Things are as bad as they've never been. What with censorship being now so fierce, whatever I'd choose to publish might get me into trouble," Grigorovich complained in an 1850 letter.
Grigorovich's epic, sprawling novel Cart-Tracks (Prosyolochnye Dorogi, 1852) with its gallery of social parasites came under criticism for being overblown and derivative, Gogol's Dead Souls considered the obvious point of reference. Better received was his The Fishermen (Rybaki, 1853) novel, one of the earliest works of Russian literature pointing at the emergence of kulak (rich, exploitative peasant) in the Russian rural envir
Dmitry Grigorovich