The article examines the facts of Nikolai Gogol’s biography and his several works which shed the light on the author’s early acquaintance with Ivan Krylov’s works. The material from Dmitry Troschinsky’s library has been used for a detailed study for the first time. An epigraph to the fable The Eagle and the Bee for Gogol’s handwritten journal Meteor literatury (The meteor of literature) has been analyzed. It is assumed that Krylov’s oeuvre may have influenced the early Gogol.
