In 1907, the Russian Academy of Sciences charged I.A. Shliapkin with editing the collected works of A.P. Sumarokov. Professor Shliapkin was a well-known scholar and collector of rare books and manuscripts who taught at the University of St. Petersburg. He spent three years doing the groundwork for the project: he purchased nearly every edition of Sumarokov published in the 18th century for his private library and compiled a vast bibliography. But for unknown reasons, in 1910 Shliapkin stopped all work on the edition, which was thus never published.