The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Seven who were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev

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Title: The Seven who were Hanged

Author: Leonid Andreyev

Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6722]
Posting Date: June 1, 2009
Last Updated: September 28, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED ***

Produced by Eric Eldred

THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED

A STORY

By Leonid Andreyev

Authorized Translation From The Russian By Herman Bernstein.

DEDICATION

To Count Leo N. Tolstoy This Book is Dedicated, by Leonid Andreyev

The Translation of this Story Is Also Respectfully Inscribed to Count
Leo N. Tolstoy by Herman Bernstein

FOREWORD

Leonid Andreyev, who was born in Oryol, in 1871, is the most popular,
and next to Tolstoy, the most gifted writer in Russia to-day. Andreyev
has written many important stories and dramas, the best known among
which are "Red Laughter," "Life of Man," "To the Stars," "The Life of
Vasily Fiveisky," "Eliazar," "Black Masks," and "The Story of the Seven
Who Were Hanged."

In "Red Laughter" he depicted the horrors of war as few men had ever
before done it. He dipped his pen into the blood of Russia and wrote the
tragedy of the Manchurian war.

In his "Life of Man" Andreyev produced a great, imaginative "morality"
play which has been ranked by European critics with some of the greatest
dramatic masterpieces.

The story of "The Seven Who Were Hanged" is thus far his most important
achievement. The keen psychological insight and the masterly simplicity
with which Andreyev has penetrated and depicted each of the tragedies of
the seven who were hanged place him in the same class as an artist with
Russia's greatest masters of fiction, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy.

I consider myself fortunate to be able to present to the English-reading
public this remarkable work, which has already produced a profound
impression in Europe and which, I believe, is destined for a long time
to come to play an important part in opening the eyes of the world to
the horrors perpetrated in Russia and to the violence and iniquity of
the destruction