Solovyova began publishing poetry at the age of 16 with her first publication in the journal Ниве. She moved to Saint Petersburg in 1895, becoming involved with the literary circle which included Konstantin Balmont, Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and Konstantin Sluchevsky, among other Symbolist poets. In 1898, at a gathering of Symbolist poets in the home of Mikhail Petrovich Manasein, a professor at the Imperial Military Medical Academy, Solovyova met him and his wife, Natalia. In 1899, when she published her first volume of poetry, which she also illustrated, called Стихотворения, she began using the pseudonym Allegro. She also published poetry in magazines like Вестник Европы, Мир Божий, and Русское богатство. By around 1901, Solovyova met the sisters, Adelaida and Eugenia Gertsyk and also around 1903 became acquainted with the poet Maximilian Voloshin. From around 1906, she began summering in Koktebel, in the Crimea with the Gertsyk sisters, who headed a literary salon which included Voloshin and the Manaseins. In 1906, Solovyova founded the publishing house and children's magazine Тропинка, where she worked as an editor, illustrator, and writer along with Manaseina. Both she and the publishing house were awarded the Pushkin Gold Medal in 1908. She personally published over twenty books while running Тропинка, including many translations of noted literary works for children. She was the first to translate Alice in Wonderland into Russian, which she published as Приключения Алисы в Стране чудес in 1909. The publication also became widely used by other Symbloist poets as an outlet for their creative works. It was a significant publishing house in the period, publishing around 100 books by 1918, for which more than half were for the Ministry of Education. In addition to writing and translating, Solovyova published many drawings for the magazine. Her works represent a wide range of styles, from imitations of children's sketches to Art Nouveau graphics. She also solicited drawings from other artists to enhance the layout of the magazine. Though she often followed in the Symbolist tradition, Solovyova also wrote in other genres, writing lullabies, religious legends, riddles and poems about nature and animals. One of these was a stage drama, Svadba solntsa i vesny written in 1907 in celebration of spring. Music for the piece was written by Mikhail Kuzmin. Solovyova and Manaseina began an affair, and beginning 1909, they lived with Natalia's husband in the same house at #16 Voznesensky in Saint Petersburg. In 1917, the three lived in voluntary exile in Crimea to avoid the violence of the Russian Revolution in the capital. While living in the Crimea, she continued to write, but her works only occasionally managed to make it into the newspapers and journals in Simferopol or Feodosia. She taught for the Feodosia Department of Education and gave lectures in Koktebel at the People's University. To earn a living, she and Manaseina created and sold hats. At the end of 1923, with the help of friends Korney Chukovsky and Voloshin, Solovyova and Manaseina were able to return to Moscow. Solovyova was ill and almost immediately underwent an operation, but her health continued to decline.
Death and legacy
Solovyova died on 16 August 1924 in Moscow and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery. For many years, her contributions to Russian literature were lost and there was no mention of her in the Soviet period. She was reintroduced as a figure of Russia's Silver Agein 1999, when Tatyana Nikitichna Zhukovskaya and Elena Albertovna Kallo compiled a book, Sub Rosa for Ellis Lak publishing in 1999. The book included works of Solovyova, as well as Cherubina de Gabriak, Adelaida Gertsyk, and Sophia Parnok. In the twenty-first century, revived scholarship on her work has taken place.
