Lazarus: From their pens to your ears, genius in every story

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was born on 21st August in Oryol, Russia to a middle-class family of Polish, Ukranian and Finnish ancestry.

He studied law in Moscow before working as a police-court reporter for a daily newspaper. His literary efforts at this time were confined to poetry and those he did try to get published were all rejected.

In 1898 his first short story `Bargamot and Garaska', published in the `Kurier' newspaper caught the attention and friendship of Maxim Gorky. Andreyev now...