Natalia Pushkina

Natalia Nikolayevna Pushkina-Lanskaya (; 8 September 1812 – 26 November 1863) ( Goncharova) (Гончарова) was the wife of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin from 1831 until his death in 1837 in a duel with Georges d'Anthès. Natalia was married to Major-General Petr Petrovich Lanskoy from 1844 until her death in 1863. Prior to marriage Natalia (Natalya) Goncharova was born on 8 September 1812 (27 August 1812 Old Style) in Karian village in Tambov Governorate (in present-day Znamensky District, Tambov Oblast), where her family lived during the occupation of Moscow by the forces of Napoleon. Her father, Nikolay Afanasievich Goncharov, a scion of the family of paper manufacturers from Kaluga, was pronounced demented in 1815; the household was managed by his wife, Natalia Ivanovna Zagriajskaya, an imperious lady with connections within Muscovite nobility. Her ancestors included Euphrosine Ulrike von Liphart and Ivan Aleksandrovich Zagryazhskij Natalie (as she was familiarly known) met Alexander Pushkin at the age of 16, when she was one of the most talked-about beauties of Moscow. A.N. Muraviev recalls:"Pushkin himself, after the turbulent years of his youth, was passionately in love with the Moscow beauty Goncharova, who could really serve as an ideal of perfect Greek beauty, and he expressed his heartfelt mood in an original way with a light couplet: