A cycle of philosophical stories in an artistic, dialogical form, in essence - a philosophical novel, the most significant work of V.F. Odoevsky (1803-1869). Separate stories of the cycle were published in magazines and almanacs from the 1830s and in 1844 amounted to the 1st volume of the collected works of the writer. In the 60s, Odoevsky subjected the text to corrections and additions, but did not have time to reprint the novel. Taking into account copyright corrections, it was printed by S.A. Tsvetkov in 1913, with an incorrect reading of a number of words in terms of additions. The choice of text for this publication caused fundamental objections to P.N. Sakulin.