The history of the failed cooperation of A.N. Ostrovsky with the "Russkoe Slovo" magazine is discussed in this article. This history is described on the basis of the still unpublished letters of the famous benefactor G.A. Kushelev-Bezborodko. This incident had not yet attracted the attention of the scholars but allows to update the vision of the playwright's journalistic and, more broadly, ideological trajectory after his parting from the "Moskvitianin" magazine in the mid-1850s and before the beginning of regular cooperation in N.A. Nekrasov's "Sovremennik" in 1860s. The letters of Kushelev-Bezborodko are published in the Appendix to the article.