Tales from M SaltykovShchedrin Author:John Gibbons, Dorian Rottenberg, Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-89) was a Russian novelist and satirist. His masterpiece is his only novel, The Golovlyov Family (1876), a study of decaying gentry. Among his other works are the satirical History of a Town (1869-70) the Aesopian Fables (1885) and the Tales from M. Saltykov-Shchedrin.