History of Ukrainian Letters

Serhii Yefremov's work is the first systematic attempt to describe Ukrainian literature as a single process from its beginnings to the early twentieth century. The author combines a survey of periods and figures with his own conception, according to which Ukrainian letters developed above all as the voice of social consciousness. The book long remained the principal survey course and in that role shaped the understanding of several generations of readers and teachers regarding the structure of the national literature. Later scholars argued with Yefremov's methodology, in particular with the subordination of the aesthetic to the social, yet the significance of the work as the first complete survey remains beyond dispute. The work has been reissued many times and remains a source for the historiography of Ukrainian literary studies. Contemporary reissues add scholarly commentary that separates the author's own conception from later accretions.