Gerhardie, William Alexander

Gerhardie, William Alexander (originally William Alexander Gerhardi) (1895–1977), was born of English parents in St Petersburg. He then attended Worcester College, Oxford, where he wrote the first English book on Chekhov, Anton Chekhov (1923). His first novel, Futility: A Novel on Russian Themes (1922), was followed by many others, including The Polyglots (1925), the narrative of a wildly egocentric young officer, George Hamlet Alexander Diabologh, who on a military mission in the Far East comes into contact with a highly eccentric Belgian family, the Vanderflints; the intermingling of events of historical significance and the utmost human triviality, of Belgians, British, Russians, and Japanese, of love and war, create an oblique, lyrical, inconsequential world which is characteristic of Gerhardie. Other novels include Pending Heaven (1930), Resurrection (1934), and Of Mortal Love (1936). Meet Yourself As You Really Are (1936, written with Prince Leopold of Lowenstein) is an early example of hypertext. His autobiography Memoirs of a Polyglot appeared in 1931, and in 1940 a historical study, The Romanovs.