A Common Story (Обыкнове́нная исто́рия) is a debut novel by Ivan Goncharov written in 1844-1846 and first published in the 1847 March and April issues of Sovremennik magazine.
In 1853, encouraged by Nikolay Nekrasov, Fet joined the then rising Sovremennik circle, meeting among new faces his old friends Ivan Turgenev and critic Vasily Botkin.
Grigorovich's second short novel Anton Goremyka (Luckless Anton, 1847), this time promptly published by Sovremennik, made the author famous.
He administrated the Sovremennik until 1982, when he moved to the Moscow Art Theatre, where he has played Molière and Salieri for over 20 years.