Background
Vladimir Alekseyevich Gilyarovsky was born on November 26, 1855, in Vologda, Russian Federation. His father, a Novgorodian, worked as an assistant to the manor's bailiff, a Zaporozhian Cossack whose daughter he later married.
journalist novelist writer poet
Vladimir Alekseyevich Gilyarovsky was born on November 26, 1855, in Vologda, Russian Federation. His father, a Novgorodian, worked as an assistant to the manor's bailiff, a Zaporozhian Cossack whose daughter he later married.
Raised by his well-educated mother (who died when he was 8) and his aristocratic stepmother, Vladimir Alekseyevich left home early.
In August 1865, Vladimir Alekseyevich entered the first class of the Vologda Gymnasium and remained for the second year. At the Gymnasium, he began writing poems and epigrams on teachers ("mischief on mentors"), translated poems from French. During his studies at the Gymnasium, Vladimir Alekseyevich studied circus art for two years.
After a series of odd jobs (which included stints at a toxic lead paint factory in Yaroslavl, as a tutor and as a barge hauler), he enlisted as a volunteer during the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish war.
After a short career as a provincial actor, Vladimir Alekseyevich established himself as a journalist, winning praise and notoriety as one of the best crime reporters in Moscow. His first book, The Stories of the Slums (1887) recorded his experiences with the Moscow underworld, the Moscow of poverty and crime, finding its epitome in the area of Khitrovka.
After the revolution, Vladimir Alekseyevich dedicated himself to writing memoirs. Among those were My Travels (1928) and Newspaper Moscow (published posthumously), which recorded his reminiscences of the newspaper business of pre-revolutionary Moscow and of some famous people he'd worked with (such as Anton Chekhov), and Theatre People (also published posthumously). Vladimir Alekseyevich died in Moscow on 1 October 1935.
In 1882, together with O. Seletsky, Vladimir Alekseyevic founded the Russian Gymnastics Society.
Vladimir Alekseyevich treasured his partly Cossack descent: as a young man, he posed for one of the Cossacks depicted on Repin's huge canvas Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks; he was also a model for Taras Bulba, whose figure is part of the Gogol Monument in Moscow.
Quotes from others about the person
"He was a remarkable chronicler, with whom no one could compete in the acquisition of news... joking about Gilyarovsky, they said: "He knows everything, where everything will happen."
Chekhov wrote (1888) about Gilyarovsky's prose: "He smells beauty in other people's works", but "is terribly fond of commonplaces, pathetic words and crackling descriptions."