This book includes articles written and collected as part of the Shelf project. Created in 2017, the project aims to identify the most important works of Russian literature. To do this, a large community of experts has compiled a list of 108 works that have left a mark on history, expanded the possibilities of literature, influenced the development of language, thought and society, reported something new about the world and man, and entered the Russian literary canon. These are novels, short stories, plays, poems, literary memoirs - from The Tale of Igor's Campaign to the novel Chapaev and Void. The authors have tried to write about each of these works in a clear and accessible way, relying on extensive scientific and critical literature, placing each in a large literary context and talking about other texts that influenced it and that were influenced by it. The first two volumes of this edition included 60 articles - about Russian literature from the time of Ancient Rus' to 1917.
