File On Gorky

Description

Writers-Files is an important series documenting the work of major dramatists of the last hundred years. Each volume contains a comprehensive checklist of all the writer's plays, with a detailed performance history, excerpted reviews and a selection of th Imprisoned for his revolutionary activities and championed by Checkov, Maxim Gorky ("the bitter") had his first play produced by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1902. Chekhov wrote, "Gorky is the first in Russia and the world at large to have expressed contempt and loathing for the petty bourgeoisie and he has done it at the precise moment when Russia is ready for protest." Among Gorky's most important plays are Philistines, The Lower Depths and Barbarians. "Methuen are to be congratulated on launching this series...extremely useful to theatre professionals as well as to students and teachers of drama" (David Bradby, Speech and Drama)

Maxim Gorky was born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov in Nizhny Novgorod, 225 miles east of Moscow, in 1868. By 1878 both his parents were dead and he spent his youth as a nomadic labourer. In 1898 his collection of Stories and Sketches was published and proved an immediate success. His plays include The Lower Depths (1902), Summerfolk (1904), Children of the Sun (1905), Barbarians and Enemies (1906) and Yegor Bulichev (1932). His other books include Childhood and My Universities and the novel The Mother. A socialist from his early days, he never joined the Communist Party. He offered qualified support to the Soviet state after 1918, living abroad from 1924 to 1932. In 1934 he became head of the Writers' Union but his work showed an increasing awareness that something had gone wrong with the revolution. He died in 1936.