Crop-Eared Jacquot is a Russian story, an attempt - and a highly successful one - to reconstruct a picture of Russia in the latter years of the Eighteenth Century, when the power of the great Moscovite nobles was still largely unchecked, and the wild doings of an earlier and ruder period still possible, though rapidly becoming an anachronism. The book was first published in 1860 - the year after Dumas' return from his travels in Russia and the Caucasus. Also in this volume is Jane, published in 1859, also one of the several satisfactory literary results of the Russian tour.