About the book: year / Director of the museum complex of Tomsk State Pedagogical University Natalya Viktorovna Sainakova kindly provided photographs of the pages of the first edition of "Seven Underground Kings", written by Volkov in 1963 and rejected by the publisher. This version of the text is a draft, it has not been published anywhere, and its differences from the canonical version are fundamental. In 1964, Volkov essentially rewrote the fairy tale from scratch, significantly changing the plot. The main differences are much more mature. Power struggle, intrigue, battles, executions. Blockheads, for example, are not funny there at all. The children's editors, of course, were not satisfied with this in the vegetarian year of 1963, and the book was completely redone.