LEONID ANDREYEV is the most popular writer of Russia to-day and one of the outstanding figures in the modern literature of the world. He has been likened to Poe, but he bears a much closer resemblance to his own countryman Dostoyevsky. Like Dostoyevsky, he shows a great predilection for morbid themes and a deep penetration into the human soul, which he knows and can reveal equally well both in its normal and pathological manifestations.

THE SEVEN THAT WERE HANGED is regarded as Andreyev's best work of fiction. It is a realistic study of seven persons condemned to the gallows, an account of their behavior and their different psychologic reactions from the time they received their death sentence until they are executed. THE RED LAUGH is an impressionistic picture of the ghastly horrors of war.

The introduction to this volume by Thomas Seltzer contains the fullest account in English of Andreyev's life and works.