Editing Maxim Gorky (section)

=== ''Mother'' (1906) ===
{{main|Mother (novel)}}
Gorky's novel ''[[Mother (novel)|Mother]]'', a story of a poor working woman overcoming the life of fear and ignorance in a Russian province and joining the revolutionary cause, is considered one of the most influential novels of the 20th century worldwide,<ref>{{cite book|author1=Paul D. Morris|title=Representation and the Twentieth-century Novel: Studies in Gorky, Joyce and Pynchon|year=2005|publisher=Königshausen & Neumann|isbn=9783826030345|page=85|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D76pHaK7RnoC&pg=PA85}}</ref> and among Gorky's novels, it remains the best known work. It was written in 1906 in the United States with the goal to support the revolutionary mood of the Russian workers by conveying the political agenda among the readers through his work.<ref name=No>{{cite book|editor1-last=Sollars|editor1-first=Michael David|editor2-last=Jennings|editor2-first=Arbolina Llamas|title=Encyclopedia of the World Novel|series=Companion to literature|year=2015|publisher=Infobase Learning|isbn=9781438140735|page=1409|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T51bAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT1409}}</ref> Gorky himself was highly critical of the novel, saying that it was "an unsuccessful thing, not only in its external appearance, because it is long, boring and carelessly written, but chiefly because it is insufficiently democratic."<ref name="r">{{cite book
 |author-link1         = Richard Freeborn
 |display-authors      =
 |year                 = 1985
 |title                = The Russian Revolutionary Novel: Turgenev to Pasternak
 |language             = en
 |location             =
 |publisher            = [[Cambridge University Press]]| isbn = 0521317371
}}</ref> The opinion of Gorky have been shared by various literary critics: for example, Marylin Minto notes that the portrayal of Nilovna, the main character of the novel, is very successful, but the other characters are one-dimensional.<ref name="corn">[https://books.google.com/books?id=ehaZrlRY_YgC&q=samgin Reference Guide to Russian Literature. Edited by Neil Cornwell - Google Books]</ref> Richard Freeborn notes that the other characters are little more than "eloquent mouthpieces" of their points of view, yet, Gorky fixes the flaw by projecting them through Nilovna's apprehension of them.<ref name="r"/> Despite its artistic flaws, it is still read by general public, and some contemporary reviewers have made favourable comments on it: ''[[The Spectator]]'' in 2016, on the occasion of a new translation of the novel being published, described it as "surprisingly topical" and containing such "eternal themes" as "awakening from a life of fear and ignorance."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/revolution-now-and-then/ | title=Revolution now and then | date=21 January 2016 }}</ref>