Fyodor Miller


Fyodor Bogdanovich Miller was a Russian poet, novelist and translator.
Fyodor Miller was born in Moscow, to a family of ethnic Germans. Originally a German language and literature lecturer at the Moscow 1st Cadet Corps, Miller as a poet started out in the early 1850s with a series patriotic Crimean War-themed poems.
In 1859 Miller founded Razvlechenye, the first ever humorous illustrated weekly in Russia, which he remained the editor of up until his death. Using the pseudonyms Giatsint Tyulpanov and Zanoza, he habitually criticized Russian nihilists and radical raznochintsy.
Miller authored one novel, Tsyganka, and translated the works by, among others, Friedrich Schiller, Adam Mickiewicz, Heinrich Heine, Joseph von Zedlitz, Heinrich Kruse, Samuel Coleridge and William Shakespeare.
Several of his poems have been set to music by the composers like Vladimir Sokolov and Alexander Dargomyzhsky. A six-volume edition of his selected works came out in Miller's lifetime.
Miller has left a large bulk of poetic legacy, but ironically, it was with the tiny children's verse "Out Went the Hare for a Walk" that he entered the pantheon of Russian classics. It became immensely popular and is now considered part of Russian folklore.
The philologist and folklorist Vsevolod Miller was his son.