Name Ekaterina Kniazhnina | Role Poet | |
Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Kniazhnina (1746–1797) was an 18th-century Russian poet. Her surname also appears as Knyazhnina.
The daughter of Alexander Sumarokov, she was born Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Sumarokov and lived in St. Petersburg. She married Yakov Knyazhnin in 1770. She was one of the first Russian women to have poetry published in Russian journals. Kniazhnina was the hostess of an important literary salon.
She was the first Russian woman to write an elegy and is considered by Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary to be "the first Russian woman writer". as she, together with Elizaveta Kheraskova and Alexandra Rzhevskaia were the first women to see their works printed in Russian journals.
Ivan Krylov wrote a parody about Kniazhnina and her husband in 1787, Prokazniki (The trouble-makers).