Emin, Fedor Aleksandrovich

(name before baptism, Magomet-Ali Emin). Born 1735; died Apr. 16 (27), 1770, in St. Petersburg. Russian writer.

The facts of Emin’s biography prior to his appearance in Russia in 1761 are uncertain. He was a translator for the Collegium of Foreign Affairs and for the cabinet of Catherine II. One of the first Russian novelists, Emin was the author of the adventure novel Inconstant Fortune, or the Adventure of Miramond (parts 1–3, 1763) and the novel The Letters of Ernest and Doravra (parts 1–1, 1766), a reworking of J.-J. Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse. In 1769, Emin published the satiric journal Adskaia pochta, Hi perepiska khromonogogo besa s krivym (Hell’s Mail, or the Correspondence of the Lame Demon With the One-eyed).