Pyotr Boborykin – critic and literary historian, playwright, journalist and theatre figure, interpreter. Born in Nizhny Novgorod. He studied at the Faculty of Law of the Imperial Kazan University. As a student, he became interested in chemistry and translated Lehmann's chemistry textbook. He transferred to the University of Dorpat, first to the Faculty of Chemistry and then to the Faculty of Medicine. In 1860 he wrote the comedy "The Smallholder" ("Odnodvorets"). He worked for the journals "Vestnik Evropy" ("The Herald of Europe"), "Russkaya Mysl" ("Russian Thought"), "Biblioteka dlya Chteniya" ("Library for Reading") and others. He wrote numerous novels, novellas and plays in which he depicted how relations between social groups were changing against the backdrop of the growth of capitalism and shifts in the estate-based social order (the rise of the merchant class, the decline of the nobility) following the reforms of 1861. For example, the novel "Kitay-Gorod" is a study of the way of life and customs of merchant Moscow in the early 1880s, while the novel "Vasily Tyorkin" tells the story of a merchant of common origin who struggles against the shallowing of the Volga. The later work of Pyotr Boborykin is closely connected with the theatre. In 1877 he ran a private theatre school in Moscow, and from 1883 to 1885 he was a member of the Theatre and Literary Committee. During this period his plays "Old Scores", "The Stigma", "Doctor Moshkov" and others were staged. Pyotr Boborykin also contributed to the understanding of Russian theatre through his research and lectures on the performing arts. He regarded the theatre as a means capable of realistically portraying life and highlighting topical issues. He believed that a playwright was incapable of recreating historical reality, since regardless of the chosen setting he would always reflect only the reality familiar to him. The Bakhrushin Museum's collection holds a large number of Pyotr Boborykin's letters, as well as photographs and playbills for productions of the playwright's works.