Today is Ivan Turgenev's birthday.
Turgenev, during his lifetime, became the most famous and widely read Russian writer in Europe, where critics ranked him among the first writers of the century. In 1878, at the International Literary Congress in Paris, the writer was elected vice-president, and on June 18, 1879, he was awarded the honorary doctorate of the University of Oxford, despite the fact that the university had not awarded such an honor to any writer before him.
By the way, he was one of Audrey Hepburn's favorite authors.