The research is presented in the form close to a fundamentally annotated bibliography demonstrating how European literary experience was advanced in the first quarter of the 19th c. in Russia at the time when contemporary Russian literature was being shaped. Six parts are devoted successively to French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, and classical literatures. The major aspects of research are outlined in an extensive foreword (E. Dmitrieva, M. Koreneva). Highlights include: Comparative analysis of the international contacts of Russian literature; a new interest in the novel, the genre that manifested a new literary taste; publishing and the audience in Russia compared to other European cultures; the birth of literary criticism on the margins of rhetoric; the evolution of a literary taste where gallomania was being substituted by anglo- and germanophilia; the change in the forms of contacts from imitation to stylization in accordance with the formula suggested by Konstantin Batyushkov ‘The stranger’s treasure is mine.’