Maikov, Leonid

Born Mar. 28 (Apr. 9), 1839, in St. Petersburg; died there Apr. 7 (20), 1900. Russian literary scholar and ethnographer. Academician (1891) and vice-president (from 1893) of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Son of the academician and painter N. A. Maikov. Brother of A. N. Maikov and V. N. Maikov.

Maikov graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1860. He had already begun to publish in 1857. Maikov’s principal works, which on the whole adhered to the positions of the cultural-historical school, dealt with problems of folklore and ethnography (Concerning the Byliny of the Vladimir Cycle, 1863, and Great-Russian Incantations, 1869) and the history of Russian literature. In 1885-87, Maikov and V. I. Saitov published a three-volume collection of K. N. Batiushkov’s works together with a monograph about the poet (published separately in 1887 and 1896) and also including 75 biographies of Russian writers from the prePushkin period. Maikov was one of the founders of the journal Zhivaia starina (Living Past).