Pavel Bazhov’s Childhood Reading: Reconstruction of the Reading Biography

Abstract

The history of reading by children and adolescents in the Urals at the end of the 19th century is poorly studied due to the lack of sources. One can fill in the gap by referring to the ego documents and autobiographical texts of P.P. Bazhov. The revealed facts indicate that the educational qualification of the mother of the future writer, a pupil of the Sysert orphanage, influenced his reading circle at primary school age. These facts allow determining what he read during his years of study at the Yekaterinburg Theological Seminary; show how the reading circle in childhood affected the creative work of the writer. Reconstruction of the reading biography of the author of the Ural tales responds to the questions: whether his reading preferences in childhood were something unique or did he read what most children of the same age read at the end of the 19th century; whether this reading experience affect his future creative work.