In the end of January of 1916, Sergei Esenin’s first book of poems called Radunitsa was published. The journalist Mikhail Murashev remembered, “Having received author”s copies, Sergei ran to me full of joy, set in an armchair, and began to flick over the pages, seemingly fostering his first child. Then he said, “Some poems shouldn”t have been put”, as if he had found imperfections in his firstborn’.

‘Everybody was telling me univocally that I was talented. I knew it better than the others’, Esenin wrote in 1923 autobiography. Critics gave the book positive reviews. Pavel Sakulin, who was a literary scholar, noted in his critique that ‘a farmer”s immediate feeling speaks in Esenin, while nature and the village have enriched his language with wondrous colours’.

On the cover of this edition is the autograph of Sergei Esenin, made in black ink: ‘To the good old teacher Evgeny Mikhailovich Khitrov from a grateful student, the author of this book.1916. 29 Jan. Petrograd’. The book was kept in Evgeny Khitrov’s family. He was a literature teacher at the Spas-Klepiki school, and wrote memoirs that allow one to assess the early work and formation of the poet.

Evgeny Khitrov recalled, “When Esenin graduated from the course and we were parting ways, I advised him to settle in Moscow or Saint-Pete and study literature under somebody”s decent guidance. He accepted and followed my advice, and pretty soon I had the pleasure of reading his poems in Niva magazine. He pleased me even more by sending me Radunitsa, his first collection of poems… However, I turned out to be too impolite and insensitive. He never got a single word back from me. I still don”t understand how it happened”.