Anna Akhmatova

Anna Andreyevna Gorenko was born at Bolshoy Fontan, near the Black Sea port of Odessa, and moved with her family to Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg when she was eleven months old. Her parents were both descended from Russian nobility. From age 7 to 13 she and her family spent their summers in a dacha near Sevastopol. She started writing poetry at the age of 11, and was first published at age 17. Her father did not want poetry published under his name, so she adopted her grandmother's surname "Akhmatova" and published under the name Anna Akhmatova. In 1905 her parents separated, and in 1906 she moved to Kiev. In 1910, she married another poet, Nikolay Gumilev and began attending Kiev University to study law. After one year, she then moved to St Petersburg to study literature. She became known in literary circles in St Petersburg's and gave regular public readings of her work. In 1910, she co-founded the influential Guild of Poets, which went on to develop the Acmeist anti-symbolist school of poetry. In 1912, she published her first book, Evening, with the Guild of Poets. She also gave birth to a son, Lev. In 1918, at the height of her fame, she ended her difficult marriage to Nikolay Gumilev and went on to marry another poet, Vladimir Shilejko. She shortly began having affairs again. In 1921 her first husband was executed for his alleged role in a monarchist anti-Bolshevi…