Complete and unabridged, with 99 full-page plates by Vasily Polenov, Lovis Corinth and Ivan Shishkin. An old Cossack colonel greets his sons home from the seminary by knocking the elder down, then takes them both to the Sich and a war that will test every bond of blood and faith. Gogol moves between slaughter and lyric within a paragraph, and the steppe itself is the book's largest character. Five shorter tales follow it — St. John's Eve, The Cloak, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled, The Mysterious Portrait and The Calash. Paintings of riders, siege and horizon open this Gilded Library volume; the decoration is sabre, horsetail standard and steppe grass.