The article presents L.V. Garelina as the first Ivanovo female writer. Lyubov Vasilyevna Garelina (1821—1885) was the heiress of the famous Yaroslavl mer-chant dynasty of the Sobolevs, the wife of an Ivanovo merchant and industrialist, one of the first heads of the city and initiators of its formation, philanthropist, and local historian Ya.P. Garelina. At the same time, Garelina is the author of poetry collections, dramatic works, translations, and children's books published in the 1860s—1870s. The article systematizes the currently known facts of her biography and creative work. The phenomenon of Garelina is considered in the context of middle-class (non-aristocratic) women's literature, which allows us to determine the uniqueness of her creative situation, as well as to expand our understanding of this
very small segment of the literary process. The article puts forward hypotheses about the reasons for the lack of visibility of Garelina’s figure in the social life of the village of Ivanovo and the city of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, as well as the degree of autobiographical nature of her works. The main parameters that individualize her work are summarized: literary flair for new phenomena and trends that are just emerging in the literary space; interest in experimentation and different types of statements, which determines genre and stylistic diversity; a wide range of dialogue with “big” literature: from imitation and borrowing to offering her own versions and endings; deep knowledge of the realities and life of the merchant and industrial environment, which makes it possible to show their life practically from the inside, etc. In conclusion, a conclusion is made about the possibility of revising the history of Ivanovo literature of this period, which until now has been mostly chronicling everyday life, satirical and journalistic and focused on social criticism, while Garelina's literary experiments turn her to other areas and issues, including literary ones.
For citation: Kopytova E.A., Tyuleneva E.M. L.V. Garelina — the first Ivanovo woman writer: to the problem of the formation of the Ivanovo literary text, Ivanovo State
University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2025, iss. 2, pp. 20—33.