Wolf Mavriky Osipovich

Real name - Boleslav Mauricius Wolf (b. 1825 - d. 1883)

Russian publisher, bookseller and typographer of Polish origin, who became, according to contemporaries, “the first Russian book millionaire.” Founder of the St. Petersburg publishing and bookselling company “M. O. Wolf Partnership.”

Today, experts call the most cited books in Russian-language literature “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” by V. I. Dal, which is rightfully considered the cornerstone of all spiritual and verbal Russian culture.

The current reader is well aware of both the reprinted edition of the dictionary of the 1880s, reproduced in Soviet times, and the 1916 edition, actually banned by the Bolsheviks, edited by I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, which was republished only at the very end of the 20th century. The person who gave birth to this unique literary work in his time was the St. Petersburg book publisher and bookseller Wolf. His professional flair, deep knowledge of the market and ability to create demand for literature aroused delight and well-deserved respect from his contemporaries. They spoke about him and his stores in the Northern capital in verse: “If you go to Public, you won’t find it. If you look at Wolf, you’ll get it.”

The founder of the most famous Russian publishing and bookselling company was born on November 3, 1825 in Warsaw in the family of doctor Jozef Wolf and Eleanor Estereicher. Despite his modest financial resources, his father enrolled little Maurycy in the famous Warsaw Gymnasium, which provided a very good education, for those times. The boy studied with pleasure, read a lot and earned the nickname “book expert” in the class. More than anything else, he loved to rummage through bookstores, visit bookstores, and meet second-hand book dealers.

Wolf's youthful love for books turned out to be an all-consuming passion and determined a lot in his fate. The future publisher himself regarded his hobby with some kind of fatal predetermination: “Since childhood, I have loved books, but I loved them in a special way, not the way bibliophiles who collect books love them, and not the way scientists who collect books love them. They look in the book only for a source of information and pleasure. I saw something different in the book. My dream, even as a child, was to distribute as many books as possible, to cover the country with a huge mass of books that would cover my name with the glory of a benefactor of mankind.” Contrary to his father's wishes, he decided to devote his life to book writing.

Having successfully graduated from high school, Mauricius became a student at the bookstore of A.E. Glucksberg, located in Vilna, but did not sit still, but traveled all over Europe. For four years, the aspiring entrepreneur had the opportunity to “travel with many boxes of book goods in different areas.” The traveling salesman visited Paris, Leipzig, Prague and Krakow. “In every more or less significant city,” he later recalled, “I opened a bookstore for a short time and, having satisfied the mental needs of the local public, moved to another city. The prosperity of the inhabitants, the custom in every family to have a library composed not only of books for easy reading, but also books of bibliographical rareness, favored trade.”

Having gained practical experience, Wolf returned to Warsaw, married the daughter of a bookstore owner and finally became convinced that it was time to start his own business. Russia was chosen as the place where it was decided to create a base for organizing a large publishing house.

In 1848, he moved with his family to St. Petersburg and got a job at the large bookselling enterprise of Ya. A. Isakov. At the new place, Mavriky Osipovich (as he began to call himself) quickly took the position of manager - head of the French department - and warned the owner that he would simultaneously engage in independent publishing activities. Isakov at that time was engaged only in trade and did not create any obstacles for the intelligent employee - they became competitors much later. Five years of service in the northern capital allowed Wolf to thoroughly study the practice of Russian bookselling, develop connections, clientele and accumulate capital sufficient to run an independent business.

In 1853, the young entrepreneur left his owner for free bread and opened his own bookstore in the Cloth Line of Gostiny Dvor. The store's location alone served as an excellent advertisement for it, since the windows looked directly onto Nevsky Prospekt. Having connected two neighboring shops into one room, Wolf equipped it in a European style, which attracted many visitors. The popularity that the new store quickly acquired can be judged by the result of a playful dispute between writers S.V. Maksimov, N.A. Nekrasov and M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Maksimov assured his friends that any cab driver with the instruction: “Go to Mavriky Osipovich” would take them to Wolf’s store, and he won the bet. It is known that over a quarter of a century of operation, the total turnover of this St. Petersburg store alone amounted to 6 million rubles in silver.

Mavriky Osipovich opened his printing house in 1856. Subsequently, he received the right to commission printing equipment and “all general accessories of typographic, typecasting and lithographic art and bookbinding” to Russia; he began to order fonts in Europe and America. Initially, his printing house had only two machines, but after 10 years their number tripled and three printing machines appeared, which were serviced by about forty workers. Polytypes were printed by machine, and stereotyping was introduced. In 1870, two steam engines appeared, the number of workers reached one hundred people. At the same time, a merger took place with the printing house of V.I. Golovin, and in 1878 the best typesetting workshop, Revillon and Co., was acquired. The following year, Wolf moved the printing house to a new spacious premises on the 16th line of Vasilievsky Island. Here Wolf placed one and a half dozen printing machines and 7 steam machines.

Mavriky Osipovich undertook to print everything that was “decent and profitable.” Starting with a modest assortment of publications by Polish authors (Kraszewski, Korzeniewski, Kaczkowski, Mickiewicz), the debutant extremely quickly turned into “the first Russian book millionaire”, into a “trendsetter” in the book market, whose opinion was listened to by competitors. Wolf’s publications, thanks to the bookselling system he established, reached remote corners of Russia, which allowed N. S. Leskov to jokingly say: “Mauritius is the only king of Russian books. His army is scattered from Yakutsk to Warsaw, from Riga to Tashkent, the fate of literature is in his hands.”

Modern equipment allowed him to be the first in the country to begin the systematic publication of expensive gift editions - luxurious volumes, embossed in gold and richly illustrated. Each such publication was an extraordinary work of design art, and the artistic taste of the head of the publishing house and his employees allowed them to avoid such a common mixture of styles, which was the sin of many book “designers” of that time. The masters of Wolf's printing house used both Russian and European experience of printers - Mavriky Osipovich was well acquainted with both. In addition, sometimes he managed to obtain exclusive cliches from his European colleagues. Thus, in preparation for the set of fairy tales by Charles Perrault, authentic wooden boards with engravings by Gustave Doré were received from Paris, which made it possible to produce a “quite high-quality” edition, according to Academician A. A. Sidorov. Both Dante's Divine Comedy and the monumental Bible were published with illustrations by the same master.

Throughout his entire career, Mavriky Osipovich closely monitored the market situation and undertook the publication of a particular book only if it guaranteed a profit. He adhered to this principle regardless of the subject matter and purpose of the publications (luxuriously designed books for wealthy people, mass editions of fiction, textbooks, etc.). At the same time, such a purely commercial approach had a serious impact on the development of education in Russia.

Constantly analyzing the sales statistics of his bookstores, Mavriky Osipovich listened and adapted to the tastes and requirements of his consumers. However, Wolf was far from publishing books that could damage the reputation of a reputable publishing house: he did not follow the base tastes of the public, carefully controlling the content of the manuscripts. Bypassing the “sharp corners” in dealing with censorship, the publisher constantly expanded the range of its book products.

The authority of Mavriky Osipovich was often the determining factor in the authorities making a positive decision to open a particular magazine. Thus, in April 1860, the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee received a request from “the bookseller M. Wolf and the collegiate assessor A. Razin for permission to publish the magazine “Around the World.” Along with the petition, a program was presented in which the publisher and editor wrote: “The main concern of the editors will be to constantly provide entertaining articles, presented very popularly and simply, sometimes in the form of a story or travel notes and always in a form accessible to people , not specifically engaged in geosciences and natural sciences, for youth, for young men and for girls.” Wolf’s petition from the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee migrated to the Main Directorate of Censorship, and a month later a decision was made: “To allow the publication of the above-mentioned magazine according to the presented program, but so that the political department would be excluded from the program.” In addition to the magazine “Around the World”, Mavriky Osipovich took part in the publication of the then popular “Foreign Bulletin”.

Wolf was the first to publish a series of books for young people, taking into account the psychological characteristics of children's age-related perceptions. Most often, children's books were published according to the type of German and French “gift editions” and grouped into the series: “Green Library”, “Pink Library”, “Moral Novels for Youth”, etc. In the “Golden Library” for the first time in Russia the following were published: “ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by M. Twain, Robinson Crusoe by D. Defoe, Gulliver's Travels by J. Swift, Without a Family by G. Malo, The Best Fairy Tales by H. Andersen, Selected Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm. For children, collected works by W. Scott, J. Verne, F. Cooper, I. I. Lazhechnikov and others were published. Mavriky Osipovich paid special attention to the publication of children's magazines, among which the most popular was “The Sincere Word”, which was first published in 1877 G.

For wealthy readers, one-volume (more than 1 thousand pages) collected works of great Russian writers were intended - A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, V. G. Belinsky, N. V. Gogol, V. A. Zhukovsky. Each book contained a biography of the writer and many illustrations made using woodcut techniques. In almost every intelligent house in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and any provincial city, there were volumes on the shelves in red calico binding with relief embossing on it - from Wolf’s “Library of Famous Writers.” The Russian publisher did not forget about scientists. Solid works on philosophy, history, and sociology were published for them: “The History of Civilization in England” by G. Buckle, “The History of New Philosophy” by K. Fisher, “The Doctrine of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin,” “The History of the Candle” by M. Faraday, multi-volume “World History” by F. Schlosser.

The great merit of M. O. Wolf was the monumental publication he undertook in 1877 “Picturesque Russia. Our Fatherland in its land, historical, tribal, economic and everyday meaning” is perhaps the most powerful geographical publishing project in Russian history. The project was completed only at the beginning of the 20th century. The following were involved in its editing: scientist and traveler P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, literary critic and bibliographer S. A. Vengerov, famous historian N. I. Kostomarov, writer V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and many famous scientists. The publication consisted of 16 books, collected in 11 richly designed large-format volumes, and contained prints of about 4.5 thousand engravings, hand-carved on wood.

Fluent in the main European languages, Wolff closely followed book studies and bibliographic literature. He himself was no stranger to bibliography. The catalog of French books he personally compiled in all branches of knowledge, which were in demand, was even subscribed to abroad. Under the leadership of the St. Petersburg entrepreneur, about 200 catalogs were published, as well as many advertising leaflets and prospectuses. In particular, the catalog of German books published since the beginning of the century was compiled by two of his employees, future famous publishers - G. Hoppe and A. Marx.

In total, during his publishing career, Wolf published about five thousand book titles with a circulation of more than 20 million copies. However, its merit lies not in the amazing number of volumes.

In fact, Mavriky Osipovich introduced book products new to Russia to the broad masses, for example, popular science literature. In fact, he created entire sections of literature, such as children's literature, introduced color printing and the like. Before him, all this existed in its infancy. He did a lot to make the book accessible to the middle class of Russian readers, raised its culture to a pan-European level and introduced many other useful initiatives in the field of book production.

In 1882, Mavriky Osipovich reorganized his enterprise, founding a publishing house on shares of the M. O. Wolf Partnership. The main shareholders, in addition to the publisher himself, were his wife and sons - Alexander, Evgeniy and Ludwig. However, the publishing house did not last long in this structure: on February 19, 1883, the famous bookseller and publisher died. He was buried at the Smolensk Lutheran cemetery in St. Petersburg.

After the death of the company's founder, its publishing activities remained the same as they were during his lifetime. Books for children and youth were still published and translated, children's magazines, fiction, popular science and religious and moral literature, books on technology, natural sciences and agriculture were published.

The heirs of Mavriky Osipovich well understood the commercial prospects of periodicals. Thus, already in 1884, the magazine “Nov” was founded - a two-week illustrated newsletter of modern life, literature, science and applied knowledge. Later, the main office of the magazine “World of Art” was located at the Partnership’s bookstore, the first issue of which was published in 1899.

Before the revolution, the publishing company, founded by the famous St. Petersburg entrepreneur, remained one of the leaders of the Russian book market. After the October Revolution, the M. O. Wolf Partnership ceased to exist. During the Soviet period, many unfair reproaches were made against Mauritius Osipovich Wolf. But here is the testimony of a contemporary: “Among the huge number of Wolf’s publications, there was not a single one that was deliberately reactionary, vulgar, harmful; in general, there was nothing that could bring big profits, but would harm the publisher’s reputation.”

In the role of detective - Wolf Messing The name of the famous parapsychologist Wolf Messing in the Soviet Union was known to everyone. His concerts always attracted full houses, no matter where he performed: in big cities or small towns. After these speeches, the people usually spread about