A con man travels the Russian provinces buying up the legal titles to dead serfs still listed as living on the census, in a scheme as absurd as the landowners he swindles.
Books mentioned in Dead Souls (3)
Night Thoughts by Edward Young: “For his part, the Postmaster went in more for philosophy, and diligently perused such works as Young's Night Thoughts, and Eckharthausen's A Key to the Mysteries of Nature; of which latter work he would make copious extracts, though no one had the slightest notion what they referred to.”
A Key to the Mysteries of Nature by Karl von Eckartshausen: “For his part, the Postmaster went in more for philosophy, and diligently perused such works as Young's Night Thoughts, and Eckharthausen's A Key to the Mysteries of Nature; of which latter work he would make copious extracts, though no one had the slightest notion what they referred to.”
The Georgics by Virgil: “None the less, he said, he meant to peg away until every peasant on the estate should, as he walked behind the plough, indulge in a regular course of reading Franklin's Notes on Electricity, Virgil's Georgics, or some work on the chemical properties of soil.”
Books that mention Dead Souls (5)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “he claims (he was arguing about it all the way yesterday) that Gogol wrote _Dead Souls_ about him.”
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “"It was Gogol, in Dead Souls, father," cried Colia, glancing at him in some alarm.”
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov: “the future author of a Don Quixote or a Faust, or, devil take me, a Dead Souls!”
Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov: “"That's Gogol reading the second part of his Dead Souls to Aristarkh Platonovich." — genuine in-narrative vision/dream sequence.”
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose: “a lengthy roll call of eccentrics and oddballs (a man who loses his nose only to see it walking toward him down the street) discussed with reference to Gogol's Dead Souls.”