In 1920 Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published Maxim Gorky's Reminiscences of
Tolstoy and it was recognized 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 Andreev. Almost a hundred years later Reminiscences of Tolstoy Chekhov and
Andreev is reissued in a superb new translation by Bryan Karetnyk.
