Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak (alternative spelling: Marchak) (Russian: Самуил Яковлевич Маршак; 3 November [O.S.

22 October] 1887 – 4 July 1964) was a Soviet writer of Belarusian Jewish origin, translator and poet who wrote for both children and adults.

Philanthropist and scholar Baron David Günzburg took an interest in Marshak and introduced him to the influential critic Vladimir Stasov.

[1] Stasov was so impressed by the schoolboy's literary talent that he arranged an exception from the Pale laws for Samuil and his family.

Maxim Gorky arranged for Samuil to live with his family in the Black Sea resort town of Yalta in Crimea (1904–1907).

In 1904, he published his first works in the magazine Jewish Life and in the mid- to late 1900s, Marshak created a body of Zionist verse, some of which appeared in such periodicals as Young Judea.

Marshak failed to gain admission at a university in Russia due to 'political insecurity' and earned his living giving lessons and writing for magazines.

[3] His 1913 visit to an experimental "free" school in Wales (led by the Tolstoyan Philip Oyler) is noted as the event that sparked his professional interest in children.

He published the following works at the Raduga (Радуга; in English, "rainbow") publishing house: Детки в клетке (Kids in a cage), Пожар (Fire) 1923, Сказка о глупом мышонке (The Tale of a Silly Mouse), Синяя птица (Blue bird), Цирк (Circus), Мороженое (Ice Cream), Вчера и сегодня» (Yesterday and today) 1925, Багаж (Luggage) 1926, Пудель (Poodle), Почта (Post Office) 1927, and Вот какой рассеянный (What an absent-minded guy) 1930.

He stood at the door of literature, a benevolent angel, armed not with a sword or with a pencil, but with words on work and inspiration.

Through his role as editor, Marshak attracted some of Russia's best writers to try their hand at writing for children, including Evgeny Schwartz and OBERIU member Daniil Kharms.

Among his Russian translations there are William Shakespeare's sonnets and songs from Shakespeare's plays, The Merry Wives of Windsor (together with Mikhail Morozov, who translated prosaic scenes), poems of Robert Burns, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, William Wordsworth, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Robert Louis Stevenson, W. B. Yeats, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, T. S. Eliot, A.

Besides English poetry, he translated poems of Heinrich Heine, Sándor Petőfi, Gianni Rodari and Hovhannes Tumanyan.