Eight autograph letters signed, seven in Russian, to his German translator August Viedert, and a letter of recommendation for Viedert, in German

Turgenev discusses, naturally, matters of literary interest, and compares Viedert's translations favourably with those into French by Charrier, which he does not like. He informs his correspondent, about whom little is known (he does not figure in Leonard Shapiro's biography of Turgenev nor in his published literary correspondences), that he has a lot of work to do and refers to a planned visit to Berlin in the company of his flamboyant friend the critic Nekrasov (who, it appears from these letters, is suffering from syphilis rather than tuberculosis). In 1856 he reports that a collected edition of his works will be published in the new year, adding that he hopes soon to finish his "big novel" and then to start on a translation of Don Quixote. In the later letter, he reassures an anxious and angry Viedert that the German translations published in Riga had been authorised by him and that they did not use any of Viedert's work. The letter in German is a warm letter of recommendation, in which Turgenev praises his translator's faithful and lively translations of Russian literature.