This early work by Nikolai Gogol was originally published in 1836 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. ‘The Inspector-General’ is a play allegedly based on an anecdote recounted to Gogol by Pushkin, the great Russian Poet. The Play satirises human greed, stupidity, and the extensive political corruption of Imperial Russia. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born in Sorochintsi, Ukraine in 1809. In 1831, Gogol brought out the first volume of his Ukrainian stories, ‘Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka’. It met with immediate success, and he followed it a year later with a second volume. ‘The Nose’ is regarded as a masterwork of comic short fiction, and ‘The Overcoat’ is now seen as one of the greatest short stories ever written; some years later, Dostoyevsky famously stated We all come out from Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’. He is seen by many contemporary critics as one of the greatest short story writers who has ever lived, and the Father of Russia’s Golden Age of Realism.