The St. Petersburg Diaries (1843–1848) of Anna McNeill Whistler

This annotated critical edition of The St. Petersburg Diaries (1843–1848) of Anna McNeill Whistler is an unprecedented resource for scholars in the fields of Russian and European history, transportation and railway history, art history, and women’s history. Anna McNeill Whistler, in writing her St. Petersburg diaries (1843–1848), was in a position to comment on a unique opportunity and space within her world. The wife of Major George Washington Whistler, who had been commissioned by Tsar Nicholas I to oversee the construction of the St. Petersburg–Moscow Railway, she had access to both the Russian and the foreign communities in St. Petersburg. Recording through the lens of her unyielding religious, moral, and social beliefs; unable to communicate with Russians and other non-English speakers because of her inability to achieve fluency in Russian and her shyness in speaking French, the two major languages of the capital city; and restricted by the selective cultural isolation of the English and American communities and the random ability of Russians to speak English, in her frequently detailed diaries she presented her criticizing, anguishingly empathetic, and sometimes uninformed insights into the life of mid-nineteenth-century St. Petersburg. While the diaries have been studied by previous scholars, investigations have been superficial, hampered by language barriers that inhibit access to Russian archives and printed sources. As a Russian scholar, Dr. Evelyn Harden is able to expand on the wealth of information Anna Whistler presents. Her research in archives in Russia has enabled her to provide readers with extensive in-depth annotations and biographical information not previously collected. The result of the addition of mini-biographies and hundreds of images has meant that she has identified almost everyone in Anna Whistler’s world and, where possible, clarified her understanding of what she experienced.