Korney Chukovsky

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky March NS 1882 October 1969 was one of the most popular childrens poets in the Russian language. His catchy rhythms, inventive rhymes and absurd characters have invited comparisons with the American childrens author Dr. Seuss. Chukovskys poems Tarakanishche , Krokodil , Telefon and Moydodyr have been favourites with many generations of Russophone children. Lines from his poems, in particular Telefon, have become universal catchphrases in the Russian media and everyday conversation. He adapted the Doctor Dolittle stories into a booklength Russian poem as Doktor Aybolit , and translated a substantial portion of the Mother Goose canon into Russian as Angliyskiye Narodnyye Pesenki . He was also an influential literary critic and essayist.

He was born Nikolay Vasilyevich Korneychukov , which he reworked into his now familiar penname while working as a journalist at Odessa News in 1901. He was born in St. Petersburg, the illegitimate son of Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychukova and Emmanuil Solomonovich Levinson, a man from a wealthy Jewish family . Levinsons family did not permit his marriage to Korneychukova and the couple eventually was forced to separate. Korneychukova moved to Odessa with her two children, Nikolay and his sister Marussia. Levinson supported them financially for some time, until his marriage to another woman. Nikolay studied at the Odessa gymnasium, where one of his classmates was Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky. Later, Nikolay was expelled from the gymnasium for his low origin . He had to get his secondary school and university diplomas by correspondence.

Source: Wikipedia