Samuil Marshak’s career presents a balancing act between avant-garde traditions and the socialist realist canon. Marshak came from a Russian Jewish family in the Pale of Settlement area. In his youth he befriended Vladimir Vasilevich Stasov, a prominent Russian critic, who helped him to enrol into a Petersburg college. After World War I, Marshak became an ardent educator: he worked with homeless children in Petrograd and a children’s colony in Petrozavodsk. His early career involved journalism, translating and studying, from 1912-15 in a literature department at the University of London. Edward Lear’s nonsensical playful poetry inspired Marshak to write children’s verse. In 1922 he organised the “Little Town for Children”, …
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Citation: Smith, Alexandra. "Samuil Marshak". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 June 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12110, accessed 19 April 2024.]
