Anton Chekhov Popular Books

Anton Chekhov Biography & Facts

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов, IPA: [ɐnˈton ˈpavləvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕexəf]; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and physician who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text". The plays that Chekhov wrote were not complex, but easy to follow, and created a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience.Chekhov at first wrote stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Biography Childhood Anton Chekhov was born into a Russian family on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great (17 January Old Style) 29 January 1860 in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov – on Politseyskaya (Police) street, later renamed Chekhova street – in southern Russia. He was the third of six surviving children. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, the son of a former serf and his wife, was from the village Olkhovatka (Voronezh Governorate) and ran a grocery store. He was a director of the parish choir, a devout Orthodox Christian, and a physically abusive father. Pavel Chekhov has been seen by some historians as the model for his son's many portraits of hypocrisy. Chekhov's paternal grandmother was Ukrainian, and according to Chekhov, the Ukrainian language was spoken in his household. Chekhov's mother, Yevgeniya (Morozova), was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels all over Russia with her cloth-merchant father. "Our talents we got from our father," Chekhov remembered, "but our soul from our mother."In adulthood, Chekhov criticised his brother Alexander's treatment of his wife and children by reminding him of Pavel's tyranny: "Let me ask you to recall that it was despotism and lying that ruined your mother's youth. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that it's sickening and frightening to think about it. Remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool."Chekhov attended the Greek School in Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium (since renamed the Chekhov Gymnasium), where he was held back for a year at fifteen for failing an examination in Ancient Greek. He sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his father's choirs. In a letter of 1892, he used the word "suffering" to describe his childhood and recalled: When my brothers and I used to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio "May my prayer be exalted", or "The Archangel's Voice", everyone looked at us with emotion and envied our parents, but we at that moment felt like little convicts. In 1876, Chekhov's father was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, having been cheated by a contractor named Mironov. To avoid debtor's prison he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, Alexander and Nikolai, were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow. Chekhov's mother was physically and emotionally broken by the experience.Chekhov was left behind to sell the family's possessions and finish his education. He remained in Taganrog for three more years, boarding with a man by the name of Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, had bailed out the family for the price of their house. Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches, and selling short sketches to the newspapers, among other jobs. He sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up.During this time, he read widely and analytically, including the works of Cervantes, Turgenev, Goncharov, and Schopenhauer, and wrote a full-length comic drama, Fatherless, which his brother Alexander dismissed as "an inexcusable though innocent fabrication". Chekhov also experienced a series of love affairs, one with the wife of a teacher. In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling and joined his family in Moscow, having gained admission to the medical school at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University. Early writings Chekhov then assumed responsibility for the whole family. To support them and to pay his tuition fees, he wrote daily short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life, many under pseudonyms such as "Antosha Chekhonte" (Антоша Чехонте) and "Man Without Spleen" (Человек без селезенки). His prodigious output gradually earned him a reputation as a satirical chronicler of Russian street life, and by 1882 he was writing for Oskolki (Fragments), owned by Nikolai Leykin, one of the leading publishers of the time. Chekhov's tone at this stage was harsher than that familiar from his mature fiction.In 1884, Chekhov qualified as a physician, which he considered his principal profession though he made little money from it and treated the poor free of charge.In 1884 and 1885, Chekhov found himself coughing blood, and in 1886 the attacks worsened, but he would not admit his tuberculosis to his family or his friends. He confessed to Leykin, "I am afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my colleagues." He continued writing for weekly periodicals, earning enough money to move the family into progressively better accommodations. Early in 1886 he was invited to write for one of the most popular papers in St. Petersburg, Novoye Vremya (New Times), owned and edited by the millionaire magnate Alexey Suvorin, who paid a rate per line double Leykin's and allowed Chekhov three times the space. Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend, perhaps Chekhov's closest.Before long, Chekhov was attracting literary as well as popular attention. The sixty-four-year-old Dmitry Grigorovich, a celebrated Russian writer of the day, wrote to Chekhov after reading his short story "The Huntsman" that "You have real talent, a talent that places you in the front rank among writers in the new generation." .... Discover the Anton Chekhov popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Anton Chekhov books.

Best Seller Anton Chekhov Books of 2024

  • Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Anton Chekhov

    Victor Emeljanow

    This set comprises forty volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by the...

  • Best Russian Short Stories synopsis, comments

    Best Russian Short Stories

    Various, Thomas Seltzer (Translator)

    Translated by Thomas SeltzerTable of ContentsThe Queen of Spades By Alexsandr S. Pushkin The Cloak By Nikolay V. Gogol The District Doctor By Ivan S. Turgenev The Christmas Tree...

  • The Collected Plays of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    The Collected Plays of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov

    This carefully crafted ebook: "The Collected Plays of Anton Chekhov" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Excerpt: "In each ...

  • Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov

    Maxim Gorky

    This collection of short biographies about Chekhov includes: Fragments of Recollections by Gorky, To Chekhov's Memory by Kuprin, and A. P. Chekhov by Bunin.

  • Somebody with a Little Hammer synopsis, comments

    Somebody with a Little Hammer

    Mary Gaitskill

    In essays on matters literary, social, cultural, and personal, Mary Gaitskill explores date rape and political adultery, the transcendentalism of the Talking Heads, the melancholy ...

  • Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov, Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky

    Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, and Anna Karenina, which was an Oprah Book Club pick and millioncopy best...

  • Anton Chekhov - Selected stories synopsis, comments

    Anton Chekhov - Selected stories

    Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov Selected storiesTable of contentsA BlunderA Boring StoryAbout LoveA ChameleonA Country CottageA Daughter Of AlbionA Defenseless CreatureAfter The TheatreAgafyaA Happ...

  • Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life synopsis, comments

    Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

    Yiyun Li

    In her first memoir, awardwinning novelist Yiyun Li offers a journey of recovery through literature: a letter from a writer to likeminded readers. “A meditation on the fact that li...

  • Note-Book of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Note-Book of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov

    These are random jottings of all kinds of things that Chekhov obviously felt were worthy of further consideration: anecdotes, funny names, odd facts, true stories, observations, in...

  • Chekhov Becomes Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Chekhov Becomes Chekhov

    Bob Blaisdell

    A revelatory portrait of Chekhov during the most extraordinary artistic surge of his life.In 1886, a twentysixyearold Anton Chekhov was publishing short stories, humor pieces,...

  • The Complete Short Novels synopsis, comments

    The Complete Short Novels

    Anton Chekhov, Larissa Volokhonsky & Richard Pevear

    (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Aanton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels–here brought toget...

  • Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Anton Chekhov

    Donald Rayfield

    The description 'definitive' is too easily used, but Donald Rayfield's biography of Chekhov merits it unhesitatingly. To quote no less an authority than Michael Frayn:'With questio...

  • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain synopsis, comments

    A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

    George Saunders

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work an...

  • Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Anton Chekhov

    Rose Whyman

    Anton Chekhov offers a critical introduction to the plays and productions of this canonical playwright, examining the genius of Chekhov's writing, theatrical representation and dra...

  • Greatest Works of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Greatest Works of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov

    This carefully crafted ebook: "Greatest Works of Anton Chekhov" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Excerpt: "In each one o...

  • The Collected Works of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov synopsis, comments

    The Collected Works of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

    This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works or all the significant works the Œuvre of this famous and brilliant writer in one ebook 6800 pages easytoread and easytonavi...

  • 7 best short stories by Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    7 best short stories by Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov & August Nemo

    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a master of the modern short story. He was a literary artist of laconic precision who probed below the surface of life, laying bare the secret motives o...

  • The Amur River synopsis, comments

    The Amur River

    Colin Thubron

    "A gripping read with fascinating political insight." (Sunday Times, London)"Elegant, elegiac and poignant...Thubron is an intrepid traveler, a shrewd observer and a lyrical guide....

  • The Best Works of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    The Best Works of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov

    Musaicum Books presents to you this carefully created collection of Anton Chekhov's greatest works. This ebook has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards ...

  • Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov

    Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of and which was an Oprah Book Club pick and millioncopy bestseller, bring their unmatched talents to a col...

  • The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov

    The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov: Volume I, is a short story anthology of 53 classic stories by the godfather of Russian literature, Anton Chekhov. This anthology contains short ...

  • The Plays of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    The Plays of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov is considered by many as one of the greatest short story writers of alltime. In addition to the large number of short stories that he wrote he also produced several d...

  • Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov

    Ivan Alekseevich Bunin & Maksim Gorky

    Three long essays written by personal acquaintances of Russian writer Anton Chekov, concerning their relationship with the man and reflecting fondly on his personal nature. Transla...

  • Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov was a master of the short story. The son of a former serf in southern Russia, he attended Moscow University to study medicine, writing short stories for periodicals i...

  • Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends synopsis, comments

    Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

    Anton Chekhov & Constance Garnett

    The letters is this 1920 collection written by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov were selected as representative of Chekhov’s life and opinions by the translator, British translator...

  • Short Stories by Anton Chekhov synopsis, comments

    Short Stories by Anton Chekhov

    Anton Chekhov

    This volume features a trilogy of interlinked stories: "About Truth", "About Freedom", "About Love". In "About Love", Anton Chekhov explores the theme of love through the lens of ...

  • Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series synopsis, comments

    Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series

    Anton Chekhov

    The last few years have seen a large and generally unsystematic mass of translations from the Russian flung at the heads and hearts of English readers. The ready acceptance of Chek...