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1889
Born Anna Gorenko to father Andrei, a maritime engineer, and to mother Inna Stogova, a former member of the revolutionary group the People's Will.
1903
Meets Gumilev, her future husband
1907
Graduates from Fundukleevskaya Gimnazia in Kiev, after having attended Tsarskoe Selo for a number of years
Her first poem appears in Sirius, Gumilev's journal, and begins to participate in the Guild of Poets, the group that would spawn the Acmeist movement
1910
Marries Gumilev and they travel to Paris where they meet the then unknown Modigliani, who painted a drew Akhmatova a number of times (see left)
1912
First collection Evening appears under the pseudonym Anna Akhmatova, a name she takes from her Tatar grandmother. This collection highlighted the intimate, colloquial, romantic voice that would characterize much of her early poetry
Son Lev is born
1914
Second collection Rosary appears Gumilev leaves her to join the Cavalry
1915
Writes "By the Very Sea"
Marries Vladimir Shileiko, who tries to stop her writing by burning her poems
1917
Publishes The White Flock, in which her use of fire thematics come to the fore, and her tone becomes more severe
1921
Gumilev executed for involvement in counterrevolutionary plot
1922
Publishes Anno Domini, in which her use of religious themes increase
She becomes unable to publish, as a forced silence begins because her apolitical work was thought incompatible with the new regime
1926-1940
Lives with art critic Nikolai Punin
Works on cycle Reed, poems dedicated to Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Dante
1928
Officially divorces Shileiko
1935-40
Writes Requiem, her tribute to human suffering, inspired by the arrest of her son and the purges of the 1930's
1940
A reprint and new cycle of poems Six Books appears, but is quickly recalled
Begins writing "Poem without a Hero" on which she works until her death. This would be her most dense, complex and layered poem
1943
Evacuated to Tashkent form Leningrad, volume Selected Verses appears there
1955(?)
Son released from prison and rehabilitated
1958
Edition with new work The Course of Time appears under her supervision; Seventh Book, including "Poem without a Hero" also included
1964
Italy awards her Taormina Prize for poetry
1965
Awarded honorary degree by Oxford University
1966
Dies in Domodedovo, as the grande dame of Russian verse, a patron to young poets such as Brodsky and Voznesensky
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