Mavrikii Osipovich Volf

Born Nov. 12 (24), 1825, in Warsaw; died Feb. 19 (Mar. 3), 1883, in St. Petersburg. Russian publisher and bookseller.

During the 1840’s, Vol’f worked in bookstores in Warsaw, Paris, Leipzig, and Vilnius. In 1848 he became an employee in Ia. A. Isakov’s bookstore in St. Petersburg. In 1853, Vol’f opened his own bookstore in St. Petersburg and one later in Moscow. The Vol’f began his publishing activity. His principal publications included translations of scholarly works, primarily in the natural sciences; the works of A. S. Pushkin, M. Iu. Lermontov, V. I. Dal’, A. F. Pisemskii, and others; the complete works of A. Mickiewicz (in Russian translation); Dante’s Divine Comedy with the G. Dore illustrations; a multivolume, illustrated publication entitled Scenic Russia’, books for children; and the journals Vokrug sveta and Zadushevnoe slovo. Vol’f founded a stock-holding publishing house in 1882; it remained in existence until 1918 under the name M. O. Wol’f Association. It issued about 4,000 books. Widespread acceptance was gained by the bibliographic journal Izvestiia knizhnykh magazinov t-va M. O. Vol’f (1897-1917).