Anna Akhmatova is one of Russia’s best known and most talented twentieth-century lyric poets and, along with fellow poet Marina Tsvetaeva, its most significant female writer. Akhmatova made her poetic debut in the pre-revolutionary era and was a key figure in the so-called Silver Age, the flowering of modernism in the first quarter of the twentieth century. She was a contemporary of Osip Mandelshtam, Aleksandr Blok and Vladimir Maiakovsky. Yet her pre-eminent position in Russian cultural history rests on more than the quality of her writing alone. Through a combination of her poetry, the shape of her biography, and the charismatic force of her personality, she has acquired a legendary status, becoming – even during her own li

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First published 09 February 2009

Citation: Harrington, Alexandra Katherine. "Anna Akhmatova". The Literary Encyclopedia. 9 February 2009.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=56, accessed 21 November 2009.]