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William Lyon Phelps (1865-1943) was an eminent American author, scholar, and critic, celebrated for his enthusiasm for teaching and his promotion of English and American literature. Despite not being the original author of 'The Best Russian Plays and Short Stories by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Gogol & many more', his scholarly work in compiling and introducing this anthology reflects his wider interests in world literature. Phelps was a Yale University professor where he taught the first American university course on contemporary literature in 1894, which later became enormously popular and significantly influenced the literary tastes of his time. Widely recognized for his captivating public lectures, Phelps published numerous works on literature, including 'Essays on Russian Novelists' (1911), wherein he displayed his profound understanding of Russian literature. His nostalgic, accessible style of criticism provided an entry point for many English-speaking readers into foreign literary realms, especially Russian. Phelps's contributions to scholarship and teaching were rooted in his belief in literature's power to enrich and inspire everyday life, a philosophy that he propagated not only in his academic work but also through radio broadcasts and public speaking engagements.
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