В сборник вошли избранные лирические стихотворения и баллады мастера стихотворного перевода, зачинателя психологической лирики В. А. Жуковского. В них изображены и картины природы, в которых переданы тончайшие душевные переживания, и воспета русская воинская слава, доблесть отчизны, отразившей в 1812 году нашествие наполеоновских войск.
Vasily Zhukovsky (Russian: Василий Андреевич Жуковский) was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century. He held a high position at the Romanov court as tutor to the Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna and later to her son, the future Tsar-Liberator Alexander II.
Zhukovsky is credited with introducing the Romantic Movement into Russia. The main body of his literary output consists of free translations covering an impressively wide range of poets, from ancients like Ferdowsi and Homer to his contemporaries Goethe, Schiller, Byron, and others. Many of his translations have become classics of Russian literature, arguably better-written and more enduring in Russian than in their original languages.