Maxim Gorky — Age, Birthday & Biography

Editor's Take:

Gorky wrote about the poor and the downtrodden from first-hand experience. Orphaned young, he worked as a dishwasher, baker and labourer while wandering across Russia, and those years filled his stories with tramps, workers and outcasts. His play The Lower Depths, set in a grim lodging house, was a huge success and is still staged today. His novel Mother became a model for Soviet literature. He had a complicated relationship with Soviet power, at times criticising the Bolsheviks and later being celebrated by Stalin, and his home city was renamed Gorky in his honour for many decades.