Exhibition "Noble Scribe"

The exhibition is dedicated to the 225th birthday of the good genius of Russian writers of the 19th century - the bookseller and publisher Alexander Filippovich Smirdin (1795-1857). According to the definition of Belinsky, his tumultuous publishing activity went down in the history of Russian literature as its “Smyrdinsky period”. We owe the “Noble Scribe” both the first full edition of eight chapters of the novel “Eugene Onegin” and the reprint of Pushkin's poems.

Smirdin’s bookstore, located first in Gostiny Dvor, then on the Moika near the Blue Bridge and, finally, in the house at the Lutheran Church of Peter and Paul on Nevsky Prospekt, was like a literary club where you could meet writers of all directions, buy a book, take a book for reading from the Smirda library. Smirdin the publisher paid the largest fees to his authors, published the works of Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Vyazemsky, Batyushkov, Baratynsky, as well as Bulgarin and many more famous and already forgotten writers.

One of his publishing ideas was the volume "One Hundred Russian Writers", where he intended to print not only works in poetry and prose of his favorite authors, but also their portraits. Alas, only three volumes of the proposed ten have been published, but they also give us an idea of the scale of this cultural undertaking. Smirdin ordered engravings to illustrate this publication to the best engravers in England, generously paying for their work.

At the beginning of 1832, the bookstore of Smirdin settled on Nevsky Prospekt, and on February 19 the publisher arranged a gala dinner on this occasion, which was attended by Pushkin, Krylov, Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky, Bulgarin, Grech and many other writers and artists. At lunch, the authors presented the publisher with their unpublished works, which, at the suggestion of Zhukovsky, made up the "portfolio" of the new magazine "Housewarming". This magazine and the library "Library for Reading", published by Smirdin since 1834, were supposed to unite different, sometimes irreconcilable in their views, writers.

Generosity was one of the reasons for the ruin of Smirdin: in 1847, publishing projects were exhausted. Upon his death, Smirdin left the family without a livelihood, and St. Petersburg writers collected in memory of the publisher and to help his children “Collection of literary articles dedicated to the memory of A. F. Smirdin” in 6 volumes.

The collections of the All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin contain books of unique value from the library of the “noble scribe” (as Smirdin Pushkin called it), magazines published by him, his portraits and portraits of writers - contemporaries and friends of the publisher, which will be presented at the exhibition.