Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (Russian: Ива́н Андре́евич Крыло́в; February 13, 1769 – November 21, 1844) is Russia's best known fabulist and probably the most epigrammatic of all Russian authors.[1] Formerly a dramatist and journalist, he only discovered his true genre at the age of 40. While many of his earlier fables were loosely based on Aesop's and La Fontaine's, later fables were original work, often with a satirical bent. Ivan Krylov was born in Moscow, but spent his early years in Orenburg and Tver. His father, a distinguished military officer, resigned in 1775 and died in 1779, leaving the family destitute. A few years later Krylov and his mother moved to St.Petersburg in the hope of securing a government pension. There, Krylov obtained a position in the civil service, but gave it up after his mother's death in 1788. His literary career began in 1783, when he sold to a publisher the comedy “The coffee-grounds fortune teller” (Kofeynitsa) that he had written at 14, although in the end it was never published or produced. Receiving a sixty ruble fee, he exchanged it for the works of Molière, Racine, and Boileau and it was probably under their influence that he wrote his other plays, of which his Philomela (written in 1786) was not published until 1795.