Vasily Alekseyevich Bilbasov (1838-1904) was a Russian historian and journalist. After the closure of the Golos newspaper in 1883, which bilbasov edited for 12 years, He devoted himself to the study of Catherine II. Having collected and processed previously unknown documentary materials on the history of her reign, he presented to Russian society the image of Catherine-a woman, which differed from the popular tales generated by the long ban on access to the personal documents of the Empress. The first volume of the book was published in 1890 and was highly appreciated by historians and readers. The second volume, published in 1891, was withdrawn from sale and destroyed by the censors on the instructions of Alexander III, who was angry at some published materials, considering it inappropriate to disclose certain details of the life of the Imperial family. The author had to reduce his work so that the banned book, which did not lose interest in the following years, reached the reader. And finally, in 1900. it was published in Berlin in Russian without censorship. Bilbasov's work is published in the full author's edition.