Russian Folk Tales and Superstitious Stories about Evil Spirits

The collection includes tales, legends, and superstitions of the Russian people, gathered and published in 1910–1911 by the ethnographer Alexander Evgenievich Burtsov (1863–1938). 468 illustrations and design elements in the book were created by artists Leonid (Johann) Pavlovich Albrecht (1872–1942), Mikhail Abramovich Balunin (1875–?), Nikolai Nikolaevich Gerardov (1873–1919), Afanasy De Paldo, Luka Timofeevich Zlotnikov (1878–1918), Vasily Grigoryevich Malychev (1843–?), Lydia Alexeyevna Poltoratskaya (1864–?), Vasily Ivanovich Tkachenko (1880–?), and Alexey Nikolaevich Tretyakov (1873–?).
The first guild merchant, honorary citizen of St. Petersburg Alexander Evgenievich Burtsov (1863–1938) was born in one of the villages of the Vologda province into a prosperous peasant family. At nineteen, he moved to the capital, first working in his uncle's currency exchange shop, and then moved to the office of brothers Vasily and Pavel, managing it until 1917. Thanks to skilled management, the family business was transformed into the "Banking Office of the Burtsov Brothers" — one of the largest banking houses of then Russia.
At the age of thirty, wealthy Alexander Evgenievich became interested in collecting; he gathered rare books, illustrated editions, magazines and newspapers, lithographs and paintings, historical documents and autographs, including letters from I. A. Goncharov, F. M. Dostoevsky, A. G. Rubinstein, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, I. S. Turgenev, A. P. Chekhov. Burtsov's collection numbered about 1,500 graphic works, as well as over 150 paintings by V. L. Borovikovsky, K. P. Bryullov, V. E. Makovsky, K. S. Petrov-Vodkin, N. K. Roerich, S. Y. Sudeikin and many others. Burtsov's collection of paintings and graphics was so large that he even planned to create a Museum of Russian Art within the walls of his house.
In 1892–1893, Alexander Evgenievich made a series of trips to the Russian North, where he purchased ancient items from peasants, studied local folklore, recorded tales, legends, and other ethnographic materials that narrate the beliefs, spiritual concepts, customs, work, everyday life, and holidays of the Russian people.
Since 1895, Burtsov engaged in publishing not for sale, but to preserve monuments of Russian art and antiquity. He reprinted rare books, published multi-volume thematic descriptions of his library, reproductions, almanacs, collections, magazines, and his own works on bibliography, including "My Leisure: An Artistic and Ethnographic Collection”, offered to modern readers in this edition. It was first published in 1910–1911 in 11 volumes in a limited edition (about 500 copies); even during the author's lifetime, the publication became a bibliographic rarity.