The article studies literary sources of the plot about the arrival of a landowner in the village, presented in A. F. Pisemsky’s novel The Troubled Sea (1863). The paper reveals that the model of this plot was formed in the stories of the pre-reform period, i.e. at the turn of the 1850s–1860s. Especially often stories with this plot were published in M. N. Katkov’s magazine Russkiy Vestnik (The Russian Bulletin). The main feature distinguishing this plot is the image of a landowner coming to the village.
