First published in 1852, "Sketches from a Hunter's Album" is a loose series of lyrical stories of rural life under serfdom. This expanded edition includes all Turgenev's other short stories.

Drawn from his first-hand observation of the countryside and its ways of life, Turgenev's anecdotes, portraits and lyrical impressions depict the peasants and the tyranny of serfdom with such immediacy that when the first of these Sketches appeared in book form in 1852 they were read as inflammatory polemic and led to his arrest and confinement at his estate of Spasskoye.