Denis Fonvizin

• Name — Denis Fonvizin • Birth Name — Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin • Born — 14 April 1745 • Birthplace — Moscow, Russia • Died — 12 December 1792 • Place of death — Saint Petersburg, Russia • Resting Place — Lazarevskoe Cemetery, Saint Petersburg • Occupation — * Writer • playwright • translator • Education — Imperial Moscow University • Spouse — Ekaterina Ivanovna Rogovikova (1774–1792)

Denis Fonvizin was born in Moscow into a noble Russian Orthodox family. He was the first of eight children. His mother Ekaterina Vasilievna Fonvizina (née Dmitrieva-Mamonova) (born 1718) belonged to the Smolensk Rurik branch on her father's side and to the Grushetsky family on her mother's side; she was a cousin-niece of Tsaritsa Agafya Grushetskaya and an aunt to Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov, who was famously a lover of Catherine the Great. His father Ivan Fonvizin (1705–1785) started as an army officer, then served in the Collegium of Accounting, becoming a State Councillor in 1783. His ancestor Baron Berndt von Wiesen belonged to the Livonian Order, was captured during the Livonian War and became a naturalized Russian citizen; his descendants Russified, and the family name transformed over the years, but it was Ivan Andreevich who started writing it as Fonvizin. Denis Fonvizin received a good education at the Imperial Moscow University and very early began writing and translating. He entered the civil service, becoming secretary to Count Nikita Panin, one of the great noblemen of Catherine the Great's reign. Because of Panin's protection, Fonvizin was able to write critical plays without fear of being arrested. In the late 1760s, he completed the first of his two famous comedies, The Brigadier-General. A man of means, he was always a dilettante rather than a professional author, though he became prominent in literary and intellectual circles. In 1777–78 he traveled abroad, the principal aim of his journey being the medical faculty of Montpellier. He described his voyage in his Letters from France—one of the most elegant specimens of the prose of the period, and the most striking document of that anti-French nationalism which among the Russian elite of the time of Catherine went hand in hand with a complete dependence on French literary tastes. In 1782 Fonvizin's second and best comedy The Minor appeared, which definitely classed him as the foremost of Russian playwrights. His last years were passed in constant suffering and traveling abroad for his health. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1792.

Indexed under European Political History Analysis, Historical Influence and Diplomacy, Historical Art and Culture Studies. Recorded as linguist, writer, playwright, poet and translator. Identity and origins. The authorities additionally record the headings Denis von Vísin and Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin. His recorded language was Russian. He was the child of Ivan A. Fonvizin and Yekaterina Dmitriyeva-Mamonova.