A Sportsman's Sketches (; also known as
The Hunting Sketches and
Sketches from a Hunter's Album) was an 1852 collection of
short stories by
Ivan Turgenev. It was the first major writing that gained him recognition. He wrote this collection of short stories based on his own observations while hunting at his mother’s estate at Spasskoye, where he learned of the abuse of the peasants and the injustices of the Russian system that constrained them. The frequent abuse of Turgenev by his mother certainly had an effect on this work. The stories were first published in
The Contemporary with each story separate before appearing in 1852 in book form. He was about to give up writing when the first story, "Khor and Kalinich," was well received. This work is part of the
Russian realist tradition in that the narrator is usually an uncommitted observer of the people he meets. The work as a whole actually led to Turgenev’s house arrest (part of the reason, the other being his epitaph to
Nikolai Gogol) at Spasskoye. It was also partially responsible for the abolition of
serfdom in Russia.