We can say that the poem Dead Souls was a work of N. V. Gogol's life. After all, out of the twenty-three years of his writing biography, he gave seventeen years to work on this work.
The history of the creation of "Dead Souls" is inextricably linked with the name of Pushkin. In “Author's Confession,” Gogol recalled that Alexander Sergeevich repeatedly pushed him to write a large, large-scale work. The story of the poet about the incident he heard in Chisinau during the exile was decisive. He always remembered him, but told Nikolai Vasilievich only a decade and a half after what happened. So, the story of the creation of “Dead Souls” is based on the real adventures of the adventurer, who bought the long-dead serfs from the landowners in order to lay them, as if alive, in the Board of Trustees for a considerable loan.
In fact, in real life, the invention of the main character of the poem by Chichikov was not so rare. In those years, fraud of this kind was even common. It is possible that in Mirgorod district itself there was a case with the purchase of the dead. One thing is obvious: the story of the creation of "Dead Souls" is connected not with one such event, but with several, which the writer skillfully generalized.
Chichikov’s gamble is the plot core of the work. The smallest details look reliable, as they are taken from real life. The possibility of such adventures was due to the fact that until the beginning of the 18th century, peasants were considered in the country not one by one, but in the yards. And only in 1718 was a decree issued to conduct a per capita census, as a result of which all male serfs, starting with infants, were taxed. Their number was recounted every fifteen years. If some peasants died, escaped or were sent to recruits, the landowner had to pay taxes for them until the next census or divide them between the remaining workers. Naturally, any owner dreamed of getting rid of the so-called dead souls and easily fell into the adventurer's net.
These were the real prerequisites for writing the work.
The story of the creation of the poem "Dead Souls" on paper begins in 1835. Gogol began work on it a little earlier than on the “Examiner”. However, at first she was not too attracted to him, because, having written three chapters, he returned to comedy. And only after finishing it and returning from abroad, Nikolai Vasilyevich took up “Dead Souls” seriously.
With each step, with each written word, the new work seemed to him more grander and larger. Gogol redid the first chapters again and, in general, many times rewrote the finished pages. For three years in Rome, he leads the life of a recluse, allowing himself only to undergo a course of treatment in Germany and relax a bit in Paris or in Geneva. In 1839, Gogol was forced to leave Italy for a long eight months, and with it the work on the poem. Upon his return to Rome, he continued to work on it and completed it within a year. The writer can only polish the composition. Gogol “Dead Souls” was taken to Russia in 1841 with the intention of printing them there.
In Moscow, the result of his six-year work was taken up by the censorship committee, whose members showed hostility towards him. Then Gogol took his manuscript and turned to Belinsky, who was just visiting Moscow, asking him to take the work with him to Petersburg and help him get through censorship. The critic agreed to help.
Censorship in St. Petersburg was less strict and, after lengthy delays, still allowed the book to be printed. The truth is with some conditions: to amend the title of the poem, in the "Tale of Captain Kopeikin" and another thirty-six dubious places.
The long-suffering work finally went out of print in the spring of 1842. Such is the brief history of the creation of Dead Souls.