Books by Maxim Gorky

Includes a selection of plays and non-dramatic writing by Gorky.

The original Shield was published in 1916 by the Russian Society for the Study of Jewish Life under the joint editorship of three eminent writers, Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, and Fyodor Sologub. In the words of William English Walling, "this is not merely a book about the Russian Jews. It is a marvellous revelation of the Russian soul." Nowadays The Shield is as timely as ever. As Pavel Milyukov, the founder of the Constitutional Democratic Party, says, anti-Semitism of the new type "is the product of the constitutional epoch. It is a response to the need for new means of influencing the masses."

Gorky (1868-1936) was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, for a time associating himself with Lenin and the Bolshevik wing of the party, and spent a significant part of his life in exile. In 1932 he returned to the USSR on Stalin's personal invitation. This work, written in 1908 while Gorky was living in exile in Capri, is reprinted from an English translation of 1916 made by the Jewish Russian-American socialist Rose Strunsky who also provides an introduction.

From the translator's note when this book was originally published in 1921: "The contents of this volume have not previously been translated into English. The first section consists of Tchekhov's Note-books, in which, from 1892 to 1904, he jotted down thoughts, quotations, etc., which were the raw materials of his writings. The second section - Themes, Thoughts, Notes, and Fragments - was found among his papers, written on sheets in a special cover with that title. It contains material somewhat more elaborated than that in the Note-books. It was his habit, if he used any of this material, to strike it out in the Note-books. Both the Note-books and the Themes were first published in Russia in a volume of Tchekhov's literary remains in 1914. We have added some reminiscences of Tchekhov by Gorky, which appeared in Russia in 1906, but which have not been translated into English."

CONTENTS: Fragments of Recollections, Maxim Gorky, To Chekhov's Memory, Alexander Kuprin, A. P. Chekhov, Ivan A. Bunin

This is a centennial edition containing some of the best pages from memoirs and essays on Chekhov. Included in the volume are a well-known literary portrait by Maxim Gorky, reminiscences of Chekhov's last years by the writer's wife, the late actress Olga Knipper-Chekhova, as well as new essays by Professor V. Yermilov, an authority on Chekhov, and Kornei Chukovsky, a popular Soviet writer.

Gorky first met Lenin at a Party Congress in London in 1907. They met again many times - during Lenin's exile in Europe and after the successful revolution of November, 1917. With the perspicacity of "a literary man, obliged to take notes of little details," Gorky gives a profoundly intimate picture of Lenin, a picture of which the developing revolution is an integral part, for it is impossible to separate the man from his role in history, so closely are they linked. In clear outline, Lenin the Bolshevik, the builder of his Party, the organizer and the leader of the revolution, arises from these pages. And it is all the more real, seen through the eyes of Gorky, for he tells of Lenin in his moments of rest and leisure as well as in moments of heated political debate; shows him at rest in Capri, playing chess and talking to the fishermen; looking after the health and comforts of his comrades; debating about the role of the intellectuals in the revolution; talking with workers about all the details of their lives.

I didn't read your books. I licked them, I rubbed them all over my naked body and licked them.Protasov, detached and idealistic, wants only to immerse himself in chemical experiments to perfect mankind. He's more or less oblivious to the voracious advances of the half-crazed widow Melaniya and his best friend's unrelenting pursuit of his wife, let alone the cholera epidemic and the starving mob at his gates. While Nanny fusses round, Protasov's admiring circle, variously skeptical, romantic and lovesick, spar over culture and the cosmos. Only Liza, neurotic and patronized, feels the suffering of the peasantry and senses that their own privileged world is in jeopardy.Gone? They're everywhere. Have you heard about the riots? The starvation and the flagrant disregard of authority. This disregard is building walls and barriers between us all. And they are massing. The crowds of angry people. And the hate... the hate between us all... kills everything.Written during the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905, Maxim Gorky's darkly comic Children of the Sun depicts the new middle-class, foolish perhaps but likeable, as they flounder around, philosophizing, yearning, or scuttling between test tubes, blind to their impending annihilation.This is Andrew Upton's fourth English version of a play for the National by one of the great Russian masters, including his acclaimed adaptation of Gorky's Philistines.

A brief profile of the Russian writer prefaces the texts of three plays characterized by their realistic portrayal of Russian life.

Modern accurate and stageable translations of five of Gorky's plays

Adapted by Phil Wilmott for the stage. Perhaps Maxim Gorky's best-known play. It was written during the winter of 1901 and the spring of 1902. Subtitled "Scenes from Russian Life," it depicted a group of impoverished Russians living in a shelter near the Volga

Presents a panoramic view of a restless society, with a bourgeoisie no longer sure of its own values, and a working class steadily facing up to the terrifying sacrifices ahead. This work is described by Ronald Bryden in the "Observer" in 1971 as 'a real discovery - the missing link between Chekhov and the Russian revolution'.

This collection of four plays, written at the turn of the 20th century, chart the descent of Russia into revolution.

Coloured by poverty and horrifying brutality, Gorky's childhood equipped him to understand - in a way denied to a Tolstoy or a Turgenev - the life of the ordinary Russian. After his father, a paperhanger and upholsterer, died of cholera, five-year-old Gorky was taken to live with his grandfather, a polecat-faced tyrant who would regularly beat him unconscious, and with his grandmother, a tender mountain of a woman and a wonderful storyteller, who would kneel beside their bed (with Gorky inside it pretending to be asleep) and give God her views on the day's happenings, down to the last fascinating details. She was, in fact, Gorky's closest friend and the epic heroine of a book swarming with characters and with the sensations of a curious and often frightened little boy. My Childhood, the first volume of Gorky's autobiographical trilogy, was in part an act of exorcism. It describes a life begun in the raw, remembered with extraordinary charm and poignancy and without bitterness. Of all Gorky's books this is the one that made him 'the father of Russian literature'.