Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an 'epic poem in prose', and within the book as a 'novel in verse'. Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence (like Sterne's Sentimental Journey), it is usually regarded as complete in the extant form. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclo