From Anna Akhmatova’s first publications to the present, her work and amazing fate invariably attract the interest of all fans of Russian literature. However, Akhmatova’s path to a triumphant poetic debut has always been surrounded by mystery. In her own words, “when in 1910 people met N. Gumilyov’s twenty-year-old wife, pale, dark-haired, very slender, with beautiful hands and a Bourbon profile, it hardly occurred to her that this creature already had a very large and terrible life." The new book by St. Petersburg writer and Silver Age historian Yuri Zobnin is the first detailed account of Akhmatova’s life before literary recognition, a life full of dramatic events closely intertwined with the historical triumphs and disasters of the Russian Empire of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This publication, intended for a wide range of readers, is published in the anniversary year of the 50th anniversary of the death of Anna Akhmatova and opens a series of books by Yuri Zobnin dedicated to the biography of the great poet of Russia.