Draft:Varvara Dukhovskai︠a︡

• Comment: Please include a lead section, which briefly introduces the subject, sets the context, and establishes why the subject is noteworthy. See WP:LEAD.
  I would also suggest that, rather than chronologically, the content should be structured by topic, eg. 'Early life and education', 'Literary career', 'Legacy and impact', etc. DoubleGrazing (talk) 06:55, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: There is nothing to suggest the subject is notable. As an author, writing one's own biography doesn't really make one a notable author, unless it is such a significant work as to satisfy the WP:AUTHOR guideline, but that isn't apparent here.
  The draft cites three sources, including the subject's biography, and although no details (even bibliographical, let alone content indicators) are provided regarding the second source (cites 2 and 6), it doesn't appear that the subject is covered to significant extent in them (apart from the biography, of course). I therefore must assume these sources don't satisfy the general notability guideline WP:GNG, either. DoubleGrazing (talk) 06:51, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

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Varvara Galitzine Doukhovskoy
Born	Varvara F́edorovna Golitsyna 1854
Died	Date of death uncertain. Often recorded as 1931, possibly in Turkestan.
Nationality	Russian
Other names	Barbara Doukhovskoy
Occupation	Russian mobile ruling elite
Years active	approximately 25 years
Known for	Diplomatic travels; and memoirs
Notable work	The Diary of a Russian Lady
Spouse(s)	Sergei Mikhailovich Dukhovskoi (1838–1901), married in 1876

Over the course of her life, Varvara F́edorovna Golitsyna--later Doukhovskoy--would write several accounts of her life. Her writing tracks her experiences as a member of Russia's "mobile ruling elite," who would circle the globe and participate in the practice of empire. Alongside providing evidence of the intimate lives of Russian elites,

Varvara Dukhovskaia was born in 1854 as Princess Varvara Golitsyna was born to Prince Theodore Galitzine and his second wife. Varvara had several nurses and then tutors growing up. By the age of four, she was fluent in Russian and French.

Portrait of Varvara Golitsyna at the age of four.

When Varvara was fifteen (in 1869), she went on her first tour of Europe with her mother in order to "finish" her in Stuttgart before her presentation in St. Petersburg. During that tour, she would visit Brussels and Spa, France. From there, a doctor would send the family off to Boulogne-sur-mer, where Varvara would see the ocean for the first time. The family would cross the English Channel and and see England--particularly London--before returning to Stuttgart. Before returning to Russia, Varvara and her mother would travel down into Italy to see Naples and Pompeii. About the experience, Varvara would write:

We spent three weeks in Naples making excursions and visiting all the curiosities in the neighbourhood. Pompeii produced a very painful impression on me by its atmosphere of death and disaster. We were present at the digging up of vases, bracelets and other curious relics of by-gone days.

In 1875, Varvara travelled to Tbilisi with her mother to spend the summer with her aunt Roerberg and cousin Nathaly Staritzki. In Tbilisi, Varvara would develop a series of new flirtations before meeting General Serge Michailovitch Doukhovskoy, then attached to Grand-Duke Michael. The acquiaintanship developed into an attachment, which survived a brief separation. The two became engaged in September and married the following April 11th, 1876.

For the next twenty-five years, Varvara would travel the world, mostly at her husband's side. As such, her memoirs provide a look at Erzurum during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878). Varvara and Sergei woudl visit the Exposition Universelle (1889). Among their more famous trips, in 1893 the two would head for Khabarovsk via the Untied States and see the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago along the way.

Varvara and Sergei would continue travelling for work and pleasure until 1901, when Sergei died either in St. Petersburg or Tashkend .

Title page of The Diary of A Russian Lady (1917).

Over the next several years, Varvara would rework her memoirs and publish them in Russian.

In 1917, John Long published a translation of Dukhovskai︠a︡'s memoirs, which was amalgamation of three she had already released in Russian.

Autobiographical Works

• Turkestanskīi͡a vospominanīi͡a [Memoirs of Turkestan] (S.-Peterburg : R. Golike i A. Vilʹborg, 1913), HathiTrust, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100728482.
• The Diary of a Russian lady: Reminiscences of Barbara Doukhovskoy (London, J. Long, 1917), Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/diaryofrussianla00dukhuoft.