Alexander Pushkin

Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin was born in Moscow on May 26, 1799. In 1811 he was selected to be among the thirty students in the first class at the Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo. He attended the Lyceum from 1811 to 1817 and received the best education available in Russia at the time. He soon not only became the unofficial laureate of the Lyceum, but also found a wider audience and recognition. He was first published in the journal The Messenger of Europe in 1814. In 1815 his poem "Recollections in Tsarskoe Selo" met the approval of Derzhavin, a great eighteenth-century poet, at a public examination in the Lyceum.
After graduating from the Lyceum, he was given a sinecure in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs in Petersburg. The next three years he spent mainly in carefree, light-hearted pursuit of pleasure.…