Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

Of the eighteen hundred and ninety letters published by Chekhov's family, Constance Garnett, the translator, chose these letters and passages from letters which best illustrates Chekhov's life, character and opinions. The brief memoir is abridged and adapted from the biographical sketch by his brother Mihail. Anton Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia, on the Sea of Azov. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov would eventually become one of Russia's most cherished storytellers. Especially fond of vaudevilles and French farces, he produced some hilarious one-act plays, but it is his full-length tragedies that have secured him a place among the greatest dramatists of all time. Chekhov began writing short stories during his days as a medical student at the University of Moscow. After graduating in 1884 with a degree in medicine, he began to freelance as a journalist and writer of comic sketches. Early in his career, he mastered the form of the one-act play and produced several masterpieces of this genre including The Bear (1888) in which a creditor hounds a young widow, but becomes so impressed when she agrees to fight a duel with him, that he proposes marriage; and The Wedding (1889) in which a bridegroom's plans to have a general attend his wedding ceremony backfire when the general turns out to be a retired naval captain "of the second rank"