Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov (28 March 1868 – 18 June 1936), better known as Maxim Gorky was born  in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. He spent his early childhood in Astrakhan, but when his father died, and he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents.
At the age of twelve, he worked as a baker, docker, and night watchman. At the age of 21, Gorky attempted suicide, shooting a bullet through his lung, though survived.
At the age of 24, he and took a job as a reporter for a provincial newspaper. Gorky managed to publish a few short stories, and was the first Russian author to write sympathetically of such characters as tramps and thieves, emphasizing their daily struggles against overwhelming odds.
Gorky spent the next two years toiling over two plays, The Smug Citizen (1902) and The Lower Depths. As a result of Gorky's activities, he also continued to be in and out of jail. Disillusioned, he went to Italy, where he remained from 1922 to 1930.
In 1928, Gorky yielded to great public pressure to return to Russia. He died on June 14, 1936 at the age of sixty-eight, under mysterious circumstances. Gorky left behind a body of work that helped to found socialist realism. His other plays include The Zykovs (1914), The Old Man (1919), The Counterfeit Coin (1926), Yegor Bulychov (1931), and Dostegayev and Others (1933). In addition to his plays, novels, and short stories, he also wrote an autobiographical trilogy consisting of My Childhood (1914), In the World (1916), and My Universities (1923).