The formation of the literary ballad genre occurs simultaneously with an increase of interest in the folk ballad, and dates back to the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th century. In the literary-philosophical consciousness of this time, which was also reflected on the ballad genre formation, a shift from the imitation of samples to the apology of national origins is clearly evident.
A separate place in the development of the ballad genre belongs to the «A Night in a Finnish Hut on a waste plot of land» by N. A. Lvov (1797) In the paper this ballad is considered in correlation with other, more stable genres of the Russian poetry of the 18th century – message, elegy, and idyll. Analyzed in detail are the principles of plot structuring, the dominant motifs, the imagebearing and stylistic structure of a poem or a rhyme.