David Magarshack was born in Riga, then Russia, in 1899. He was educated at a Russian secondary school, and emigrated to England in 1920 in the hope of pursuing a higher education. He attended an evening course in English Language and Literature at University College London and graduated with a 2:1 four years later on 22 October 1924. On graduation, he worked as a journalist at Fleet Street and became a British citizen in 1931. He was commissioned to translate Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for Penguin in 1949, heralding the start of a fifteen-year relationship with Penguin Classics and resulting in seven publications with them in total. In addition to his translation work, Magarshack also made his name as a biographer, publishing works on the lives of Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin. He died in London on Wednesday 26 October 1977. David Magarshack in his later years Copyrights are owned by the Magarshack family, Courtesy of Emily Morris and Cathy McAteer