This book contains three verse narratives by Russia`s supreme poet. Each is a masterpiece of its own genre - and plays with that genre in an entirely Pushkinian way. The least known of them, The Bridegroom, in the stanza form of a wildly popular German Romantic ballad that swept Europe, is far more modern than a Romantic ballad. Count Nulin is a comic tale of Russian country life, as light as a souffle; it has the spontaneous brilliance of Eugene Onegin. The eerie, ironic Tale of the Golden Cockerel transforms the fairytale genre with its bitter subtext of Pushkin`s relations with the tsar. Antony Wood continues the endeavour he began in his much-admired versions of Mozart and Salieri and Pushkin`s other Little Tragedies - to render Pushkin`s style in compelling English verse. His introduction and end-notes place the poems in context, discuss the problems of translation, and give a glimpse of Pushkin`s life and world. Each poem opening has a drawing by a modern