A Serendipitous Error, an early novella of 1839, written when Goncharov was still in his twenties, is accompanied here by 'Two Incidents at Sea', a story penned almost twenty years later and based on two dangerous scrapes the author survived during his recent voyage on the frigate Pallada. Taken together, these two stories - translated for the first time into English by Stephen Pearl - are further proof of the eclectic narrative skills of the celebrated author of Oblomov.

It is a winter evening, and Yegor Aduyev, the scion of a wealthy family from the landed gentry, slips into the house of Baron Neilein with the intention of asking his beautiful daughter, the eighteen-year-old Yelena, to be his wife. Will the besotted lover be successful in his pursuit or will the young coquette - who seems at times to reciprocate his feelings, but who lavished lingering looks on two dashing princes during a recent ball - shatter his hopes, his dreams and his entire world?