In 1888, Vladimir Chertkov together with his wife and daughter settled in the small village of Rzhevskoye, Bogucharsky Uyezd, Voronezh Governorate, which was not far from their family estate Lizinovka. In the summer of 1889, Ertel, who lived in the small village of Gryaznusha with his family, started regularly visiting Chertkov. At that time, Vladimir Chertkov was completely enthralled by the idea of publishing inexpensive books for the people, which was given to him by Leo Tolstoy. This is how the Posrednik (Mediator) publishing house was established and operated for over 40 years.
From its first days, the Posrednik publishing house became a magnet for Russian writers, such as Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Korolenko, Vsevolod Garshin and Nikolay Leskov. The illustrations were prepared by such artists as Vasily Surikov, Ilya Repin and Aleksey Kivshenko. The publishing and distribution of books were undertaken by an experienced and energetic book publisher Ivan Dmitriyevich Sytin.
Alexander Ertel, still young but already a renowned writer, was actively involved in the work of the publishing house. Especially for it, he wrote the short story “The Tale of the Greedy Peasant Yermil”, printed in 1886 and illustrated by Kivshenko. In 1891, the book “Ivan Fedotych’s Tales” was published, which included some chapters from Ertel’s novel “The Gardenins; Their Retainers, Their Friends, and Their Enemies”.
