Peter I. Tolstoy A.N.

Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born in 1883 and began to compose early. A living example was a boy was given by his mother; She wrote books for children and adults. Alexey wrote his first story at 10 years old. In 1901, the young man moved from Samara to St. Petersburg, where he entered the Technological Institute, which, however, did not finish - the fascination with literature prevailed. By the age of thirty, A. N. Tolstoy was already published in sixteen different publishers and was the author of more than a dozen plays. After the revolution, he lived in Berlin and Paris for several years, but life in exile was not for him. Soon he returned to his homeland and not only began to actively be printed, but also harnessed to the construction of the young Soviet Republic - he became a deputy of the Supreme Council. The novel "Peter I", which he began to write in 1929, is now rightly considered the classic of domestic literature. The writer worked on this large -scale work for almost fifteen years - until his death in 1945, in the novel, he argued that cardinal changes in Russia are impossible without strong and sometimes even brutal power, therefore it is not surprising that A. N. Tolstoy was one of Favorite writers I.V. Stalin.

This edition of the novel is illustrated by the excellent works of Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin. The future classic of a book illustration was born in 1876. The craving for drawing was manifested from him since childhood, but the father of I. Ya. Bilibin was against his son’s teaching at the Academy of Arts, and as a result, the young man graduated from the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. However, a fascination with drawing was distant by I. Ya. Bilibin from jurisprudence. Back in his student years, he began to attend art classes, led by I.E. Repin. Bilibin drew inspiration in folk art and was a great fan of V. M. Vasnetsov. Already at the beginning of the XX? He formed a characteristic - Bilibinsky - a style that quickly glorified the artist; Even people who are far from art easily recognize him. The harsh winds of the 1917 revolution forced the artist to leave Russia. I. Ya. Bilibin lived and successfully worked in Cairo, then in Paris. However, the desire to be again at home was so great that in 1936 he moved to Leningrad. In the besieged city, he died in the winter of 1942 from exhaustion, abandoning the evacuation proposed to him.