Wolf M.O. (1825-1883), publisher

Categories / Literature. Book Publishing/Personalia
WOLF Mavriky Osipovich (Boleslav Maurytzy) (1825-1883, St. Petersburg), publisher and book-seller. He graduated from a gymnasium in Warsaw in 1838. He lived in St. Petersburg from 1848. Wolf set up his own company under the label M.O. Wolf Universal Book Trading in 1853. In 1856 and 1874 he purchased two printing houses (59 Fontanka River Embankment and 5 and 7 Sixteenth Line of Vasilievsky Line), joined by a type foundry bought in 1878. Wolf's publishing house came to be one of the largest in Russia. In 1853-78 he published nearly 2,000 book titles on philosophy, teaching, literature, art, physics, mathematics and medicine; he also issued a number of journals (Vokrug Sveta, Novy Mir, Zadushevnoe Slovo). Wolf was the first publisher to issue the complete works of V.I. Dal, A.F. Pisemsky and other Russian writers, the collected works of G.E. Lessing, F. Cooper, W. Scott, J. Verne et al, Uncle Tom's Cabin by H. Beecher Stowe and J. Swift' Gulliver's Travels adopted for children, fairy-tales of W. Hauff, C. Perrault et al, a multivolume edition of Picturesque Russia, the first in Russia illustrated gift editions of The Bible and Dante's Divine Comedy with illustrations by G. Dore, J. Goethe's Faust etc. Contemporaries described Wolf's bookstore in Bolshoy Gostiny Dvor (room № 18) as "almost a literary club", visited by many men of letters. In 1882 Wolf reorganised his enterprise into M.O. Wolf's Industrial and Commercial Association Joint-Stock Company which functioned up to 1918, and published nearly 3,000 titles from 1883 to 1917. His bibliographical journal Izvestiya Knizhnykh Magazinov Tovarischestva M.O. Wolf ( Bulletin of M.O. Wolf's Association Bookstores, 1897-1917) was very popular. He was buried at Smolenskoe Lutheran cemetery.

References: Баренбаум И. Е., Костылева Н. А. Книжный Петербург - Ленинград. Л., 1986. С. 201-206.

A. B. Muratov. Wolf Mavriky Osipovich
16th Line of Vasilievsky Island/Saint Petersburg, city, house 5
16th Line of Vasilievsky Island/Saint Petersburg, city, house 7
Fontanka River Embankment/Saint Petersburg, city, house 59
Баренбаум И. Е., Костылева Н. А. Книжный Петербург - Ленинград. Л., 1986 Bolshoy Gostiny Dvor
1853