At the core of this article and publication are archived documents, namely, letters of A. Smirnov to T. Shchepkina-Kupernik, their collection kept at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI). Collaboration between the Shakespeare scholar and the translator lasted for over 30 years (1916–1947). This epistolary legacy is rich in different philological subjects, including Smirnov’s and Shchepkina-Kupernik’s joint preparation of Shakespeare’s works to be printed for adult as well as younger audiences (for example, the collected works for children in four volumes, which features the first publication of Shchepkina-Kupernik’s translation of Romeo and Juliet, produced on Smirnov’s request). It is Shchepkina-Kupernik’s work on the tragedy that the author attempts to piece together in the article. The correspondence also prompts a broader question about the translatororiented editions of Shakespeare prepared for print by Smirnov in the late 1930s. The commentary supplied to the correspondence offers a reconstruction of A. Smirnov’s wide network of contacts in the cultural and publishing setting in the grim period of 1930s political repression.