"The Russian Short Story 1880-1917," in The Russian Short Story: A Critical History, edited by Charles A. Moser, Twayne Publishers, 1986, pp. 103-46.

In the following excerpt, Connolly summarizes Gorky's most well-known short stories.

[The] writer whose critical vision of the social order gained the widest recognition at the turn of the century was Maksim Gorky (1868-1936). Born in Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River, Gorky (the pseudonym of Aleksey Peshkov) was raised by his grandparents in an atmosphere of poverty, abuse, and avarice. Forced to earn his keep from an early age, Gorky held a succession of jobs, from picking rags to working as a baker in Kazan. Eventually the life of material hardship and his perception of inescapable poverty in the world took its toll when he tried unsuccessfully to kill himself in 1887.

Gorky's first literary triumph came with the publication of "Makar Chudra" in 1892. A short...