Maksim Gorky (1868-1936)

Biographical note

Russian/Soviet author, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist.

He began using the pseudonym Gorky (literally "bitter") in 1892, while working in Tiflis newspaper Кавказ (The Caucasus). The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalization, but also their inward spark of humanity.

From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929 he lived abroad, mostly in Capri, Italy; after his return to the Soviet Union he accepted the cultural policies of the time, although he was not permitted to leave the country.

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Works

Novels

The Man Who Was Afraid (Foma Gordeyev) (Фома Гордеев) / translated with an introduction by Herman Bernstein [1899] [ read | print | download ]
Three of Them (Трое) [1900]
Mother (Мать) [1906-7] [ read | print | download ]
Okurov City (Городок Окуров) [1908]
The Artamonov Business / Decadence (Дело Артамоновых) [1927]

Short Story Collections

Through Russia / translated by C. J. Hogarth [ read | print | download ]
Contents: The birth of a man -- The icebreaker -- Gubin -- Nilushka -- The cemetery -- On a river steamer -- A woman -- In a mountain defile -- Kalinin -- The dead man
Twenty-Six and One and other stories [1902] [ read | print | download ]
Contents: Twenty–Six and One -- Tchelkache -- Malva
Creatures That Once Were Men, and other stories / translated from the Russian by J. M. Shirazi and others, with an introduction by G. K. Chesterton [1905] [ read | print | download ]
Contents: Creatures That Once were Men -- Twenty-Six Men and a Girl [1899] -- Chelkash -- My Fellow-Traveller -- On a Raft

Short Stories

Makar Chudra (Макар Чудра) [1892]
Starukha Izergil [1895] Vanha Igergil
Konovalov [1897]
Buyshye lyudi [1897]
Malva [1897] [read]
Creatures that Once Were Men [1897] [read]
Notch [1897]
Chums [1898]
Cain and Artyom [1898]
Red [1900]
Evil-Doers [1901]
Going Home [1912]
Lullaby [1917]
The Hermit [1923]
Karamora [1924]
Dvatsat shest' i odna', 1899 (short story ) - Twenty-Six and One / Twenty-Six Men and a Girl (tr. E. Jakoleff and D.B. Montefiore)
Twenty-Six Men and a Girl [1899] [read]
Twenty–Six and One [read]
Tchelkache (Челкаш) [1895] [read]
Chelkash (Челкаш) [1895] [read]
My Fellow-Traveller [read]
On a Raft [read]
The Birth of a Man [1912] [read]
The Icebreaker [read]
Gubin [read]
Nilushka [read]
The Cemetery [read]
On a River Steamer [read]
A Woman [read]
In a Mountain Defile [read]
Kalinin [read]
The Dead Man [read]
One autumn night
Comrades
In the Steppe
The Green Kitten
A Rolling Stone
Her Lover
Because of Monotony
The Man Who Could Not Die
Pesnia o Burevestnike, 1901 (short story)
Song of a Falcon (Песня о Соколе) [1902]

Drama

The Philistines (Мещане), 1901
The Lower Depths: A Play in Four Acts (На дне) / trans. by Laurence Irving [1902, 1912] [read]
Summerfolk (Дачники), 1904
Children of the Sun (Дети солнца), 1905
Barbarians, 1905
Enemies, 1906
Queer People, 1910
Vassa Zheleznova, 1910
The Zykovs, 1913
Counterfeit Money, 1913
Yegor Bulychov and Others, 1932
Dostigayev and Others, 1933

Non-Fiction

The Song of the Stormy Petrel (Песня о Буревестнике) [1901] [read]
The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin (Жизнь Матвея Кожемякина)
A Confession (Исповедь), 1908
Life of Klim Samgin (Жизнь Клима Самгина), epopeia, 1927-36
Trilogy (autobiography)
- My Childhood (Детство) [1913–1914] [ read | print | download ]
- In the World (В людях) [1916] [ read | print | download ]
- My Universities (Мои университеты), 1923
Untimely Thoughts, articles, 1918
Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov / with A. I. Kuprin and Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, trans. by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf (HTML at Eldritch Press) [read]
Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy / trans. by S. S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf (HTML at Virginia) [read]

Goremyka Pavel, 1894 - Orphan Paul (tr. L. Turner and M.O. Strever)
Suprugi Orlovi, 1895 - The Orlovs / Orlóff and His Wife (tr. Isabel F. Hapgood) Orloff and His Wife: Tales of the Barefoot Brigade
Pesnja o Sokole, 1895
FOMA GORDEEV, 1899 - Foma Gordeyev (tr. Margaret Wettlin)
TROE, 1900 - The Three / Three of Them (tr. A. Linden) / Three Men (tr. C. Horne; A. Frumkin)
MESHTSHANE, 1902 - The Lower Middle Class (tr. Edwin Hopkins) / The Petit-Bourgeois (tr. Margaret Wettlin) / The Philistines (tr. Dusty Hughes)
NA DNE, 1902 - The Lower Depths (tr. Laurence Irving; Jenny Covan; Margaret Wettlin; Kitty Hunter-Blair and Jeremy Brooks; Alexander Bakshy)
DACHNIKI, 1905 - Summer Folk (tr. Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks)
DETI SOLNTSA, 1905 - Children of the Sun (tr. Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks)
VARVARY, 1906 - Barbarians (tr. Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks, in Five Plays, 1988)
V AMERIKE, 1906
MAT, 1907 - Mother (tr. Margaret Wettlin) / The Mother (Isidor Schneider)
VRAGI, 1906 - Enemies (tr. Margaret Wettlin, in Plays, 1968)
ZHIZN NENUZHNOGO TSHELOVEKA, 1907 - The Life of a Useless Man (tr. Moura Budberg) / The Spy: The Story of a Superfluous Man (tr. T. Seltzer)
POSLEDNIE, 1908
ISPOVED', 1908 - The Confession (tr. William Fredrick Harvey)
LETO, 1909 - Summer
VASSA ZELEZNOVA, 1910 - Vassa Zheleznova (tr. Tania Alexander and Tim Suter)
VSTRECHA, 1910
CHUDAKI, 1910 - Queer People (tr. Alexander Bakshi and Paul Nathan, in Seven Plays, 1945)
GORODOK OKUROV, 1910
ZHIZN' MATVEI KOZHEMIAKINA, 1911 - The Life of Matvei Kozhemyakin (tr. Margaret Wettlin)
SKAZBU OB ITALII, 1911-1913 - Tales of Italy (tr. R. Prokofieva)
DETSTVO, 1913 - My Childhood (tr. Alec Brown; Ronald Wilks)
ZYKOVY, 1914 - The Zykovs (tr. by Alexander Bakshy and Paul Nathan, in Seven Plays, 1945)
PO RUSI, 1915 - Through Russia (tr. C.J. Hogarth)
V LYUDYAKH, 1916 - In the World (tr. Gertrude M. Foakes) / My Apprenticeship (tr. Margaret Wettlin; Alec Brown; Ronald Wilks)
NESVOYEVREMENNYE MYSLI, NOVAIA ZHIZN', 1917-18 - Untimely Thoughts (tr. Herman Ermolaev)
STATI ZA 1905-1916, 1918
VOSPOMINANIIA O TOLSTOM, 1919 - Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chechov and Andreyev (tr. by Katherine Mansfield, S.S. Koteliansky, Virginia Woolf, and Leonard Woolf)
REVOLYUTSIA I KULTURA: STATI ZA 1917 GOD, 1920
STARIK, 1921 - The Judge (tr. M. Zakrevsky and B.H. Clark) / The Old Man
MOI UNIVERSITY, 1922 - My Universities (tr. Helen Altschuler; Margaret Wettlin; Ronald Wilks)
ZAMETKI IZ DNEVNIKA, 1924 - Fragments from My Diary (tr. Moura Budberg)
V.I. LENIN, 1924 - Days with Lenin / tr. C.W. Parker-Arkhangelskaya)
DELO ARTAMONOVYH, 1925 - Decadence (tr. Veronica Dewey) / The Artamonov Business (Alec Brown) / The Artamonovs (tr. by Helen Altschuler)
O PISATELYAKH, 1928 - About Writers
ZHIZN' KLIMA SAMGINA, 1929-36 (written) - The Bystander (tr. B.G. Guerney) / The Magnet (tr. Alexander Bakshy) / Other Fires (tr. Alexander Bakshy) / The Spectre (tr. Alexander Bakshy) / The Life of Kim Samgin (tr. B.G. Guerney)
O LITERATURE: STATI I RECHI, 1933 - On Literature
SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1933-1934 (25 vols.) DOSTIGAEV I DRUGIE, 1934 - Dostigaev and Others (in The Last Plays of Maxim Gorki)
Belomor. An Account of the Construction of the New Canal Between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea, 1935 (ed.)
O RELIGII, 1937 * Chaliapin * Chelkash and Other Stories * The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky * Decadence * The Life of a Useless Man * Mother * My Childhood * Selected Letters * Untimely Thoughts