Nikolai Gogol was born on March 20, 1809, in the Ukrainian town of Sorochyntsi, on the periphery of the Russian Empire. He attended the Nizhyn School of Higher Art, now Nizhyn Gogol State University, where he first began writing. On leaving school in 1828, Gogol moved to St. Petersburg to pursue his literary ambitions. His first collection of short stories, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, was published in 1831 to general acclaim. While his early stories were written in the tradition of Ukrainian folklore, his later stories, known as the Petersburg tales, established his reputation as a great surrealist and satirist of life under the Russian Empire. In his later years, Gogol lived abroad throughout Europe, particularly Italy, where he developed a great appreciation for Rome, and wrote the first part of his unfinished masterpiece, Dead Souls. He died in Moscow, Russia, on February 21, 1852.