Publications in Artist's Library

The following is a list of the publications in the artist's library at the time of his death. They are divided into two types: Books and Periodicals. Many of the publications include inscriptions by the artist, marginalia sketches by the artist, and/or markings in other hands, all of which is noted directly below the publication in which it appears. The publications are now in private collections. Most of the periodicals have been posthumously rebound.

The list does not represent the full scope of Gorky's reading. According to the accounts of many of his contemporaries, he was an avid reader with a “reverence for books.” In the words of his younger sister Vartoosh, he was "always carrying books in his pockets. History and literature and art.” He also sold many books during his lifetime; for instance, in a letter of August 1940 addressed to Vartoosh, he writes: "I have sold all my books, that is to say, those which could be sold." Many others were destroyed by fire on January 16, 1946, in the artist's temporary studio in Sherman, Connecticut. Absent, too, are the many texts that Gorky consulted that never formally entered his library.