"Maxim Gorky," in Contemporary Russian Literature 1881-1925, Alfred A. Knopf, Reprint, 1972, pp. 106-20.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1926, Mirsky examines Gorky's life and literary reputation, as well as his short stories from the years 1892 to 1899.

The greatest name in the realistic revival is Maxim Gorky's. Next to Tolstoy he is to-day the only Russian author of the modern period who has a really world-wide reputation and one which is not, like Chekhov's, confined to the intelligentsias of the various countries of the world. Gorky's career has been truly wonderful; risen from the lowest depths of the provincial proletariat, he was not thirty when he became the most popular writer and the most discussed man in Russia. After a period of dazzling celebrity during which he was currently placed by the side of Tolstoy, and unquestionably above Chekhov, his fame suffered an eclipse, and he was almost...