Research

Publications

single-authored books

Wagner and Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback edition: 2007)

Chekhov: Scenes from a Life (London: Simon & Schuster/Free Press, 2004; paperback edition 2005). German translation: Cechov: Eine Biographie (Vienna: Szolnay, 2004), 608pp. Spanish translation: Chéjov: Escenas de una vida  (Madrid: Siglo, 2007)

Tolstoy: A Russian Life (London: Profile Books; New York: Harcourt, 2010); longlisted for the 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction; translated into Portugese (2013), Chinese (2014), Turkish (2019), Arabic (2022)

joint-authored books

Literary Russia: A Guide, co-authored with Anna Benn (London: Picador, 1997; paperback: Macmillan, 1997, 495pp; second edition 2007 (New York and London: Overlook/Duckworth). 

edited volumes

Shostakovich in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)

Chekhov, About Love and Other Stories (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2004), introduction, notes

Chekhov, A Life in Letters (London: Penguin Classics, 2004), introduction, notes

Chekhov, The Exclamation Mark (London: Hesperus, 2008; 2nd edition, 2025), introduction, notes

Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2014) - introduction, notes

Dostoevsky, The Russian Soul: Dreams and Musings from A Writer's Diary, Notting Hill editions, 2017, selection, introduction

co-edited volumes

Victory over The Sun: The World’s First Futurist Opera, co-edited with Sarah Dadswell (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, Studies in Performance series, 2012)

Chekhov, Earliest Stories, co-edited with Elena Michajlowska (Boston: Academic Studies Press/Cherry Orchard Books), forthcoming 2025 - introduction, notes

translations

Anton Chekhov, About Love and Other Stories (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2004).  Shortlisted for the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, 2005 

Anton Chekhov, A Life in Letters, co-translator Anthony Phillips (London: Penguin Classics, 2004)

Anton Chekhov, The Exclamation Mark and other stories (London: Hesperus, 2008) 

Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, libretto, Victory over The Sun, with annotation, in Victory over The Sun: The World’s First Futurist Opera, ed. R. Bartlett and S. Dadswell (University of Exeter Press, 2012; [from Italian] Aurora Egidio, ‘Victory Over the Sun and the Italian Futurist Context’ and Michaela Böhmig, ‘The Cubo-Futurist Opera Victory over the Sun: Aleksei Kruchenykh’s Alogical Creation’

Chekhov, ‘Verochka’ and ‘Ionych’, New England Review, vol. 34, 3-4 (2014) 

Chekhov, ‘The Huntsman’, ‘Grief’, ‘The Requiem’, ‘Fortune’, ‘Sweetheart’, Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories, Norton Critical Edition, ed. Cathy Popkin (Norton, 2014)

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2014)