In 1831 Gogol met A.Pushkin who greatly influenced his choice of literarary material, especially his 'Dikinka tales', which were based on Ukrainian folklore. Their friendship lasted until the great poet's death.
Under the title Mirgorod (1835) Gogol published a new collection of stories. The book included the famous historical tale 'Taras Bulba', which showed the influence of Walter Scott. The protagonist is a strong, heroic character, not very typical for the author's later cavalcade of bureaucrats, lunatics, swindlers, and losers.

St. Petersburg Stories (1835) examined disorders of mind and social relationships. 'The Nose' was about a man who loses his nose and which tries to live its own life. In 'Nevsky Prospect' a talented artist falls in love with a tender poetic beauty who turns out to be a prostitute and commits suicide when his dreams are shattered. 'The Diary of a Madman' asked why is it that "all the best things in life, they all go to the Equerries or the generals?" 'The Overcoat' contrasted humility and meekness with the rudeness of the 'important personage'.

Gogol published in 1836 several stories in Pushkin's journal Sovremennik, and in the same year appeared his famous play, The Inspector General. It told a simple tale of a young civil servant, Khlestakov, who finds himself stranded in a small provincial town. By mistake, he is taken by the local officials to be a government inspector, who is visiting their province incognito. Khlestakov happily adapts to his new role and exploits the situation. His true identity is revealed but then arrives the real inspector. Gogol masterfully creates with a few words people, places, things, and lets them disappear in the flow of the story.

In Rome Gogol wrote his major work, The Dead Souls. Gogol claimed that the story was suggested by Pushkin in a conversation in 1835. It depicted the adventures Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, who arrives in a provincial town to buy 'dead souls', dead serfs. By selling these 'souls' with a cheaply-bought lands, Chichikov planned to make a huge profit. He meets local landowners and departs the in a hurry, when rumors start spread about him. During the last decade of his life, Gogol struggled to continue the story and depict Chichikov's fall and redemption.

In his later life Gogol came under influence of a fanatical priest, Father Konstantinovskii, and burned sequels for Dead Souls, just 10 days before he died on the verge of madness on the 4th of March 1852. Rumors arise from time to time that Gogol was buried alive, a situation familiar from the story The Premature Burial of the contemporary writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).
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