Varvara Komarova-Stasova

Varvara Dmitrievna Komarova-Stasova was a Russian writer and musicologist, who published under the pen name Vladimir Karenin. She wrote a four-volume biography of George Sand.

Life

Varvara Stasova was the daughter of the liberal lawyer Dmitry Stasov. Her aunt was the feminist Nadezhda Stasova, and her younger sister Elena became a leading Bolshevik. In a book of memoirs, Childhood Memories of Great People, she recalled visitors to her childhood home including Modest Mussorgsky.
Her first publication was a female Bildungsroman, Musia. Her next effort was a biography of the 18th-century German actor-manager Friederike [Caroline Neuber], which she later tried unsuccessfully to adapt for the stage. By 1891, she was at work on her biography of Sand, which appeared between 1899 and 1926.