Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev by Maxim Gorky

In “Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev”, Gorky offers vivid memories of three literary giants. Through candid anecdotes and observations, he captures their personalities, struggles and the literary world they shaped. First published in 1920 by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press, it was considered a masterpiece of modern biography.

In 1920, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press published Maxim Gorky’s Reminiscences of Tolstoy and it was recognised almost immediately as one of the few masterpieces of modern biography. ‘It is one of the most remarkable biographical pieces ever written,’ writes Leonard Woolf in his autobiography. ‘It makes one hear, see, feel Tolstoy and his character as if one were sitting in the same room – his greatness and his littleness, his entrancing and infuriating complexity, his titanic and poetic personality, his superb humour.’ In 1934, the book was expanded to include Gorky’s memoirs of two other great Russian literary figures, Anton Chekhov and Leonid Andreyev.

Almost a hundred years later, Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev is reissued in a superb new translation by Bryan Karetnyk, with an introduction by J.M. Coetzee

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