Reading Chekhov’s stories, we are as close as we can be to being in his company.Ĭhekhov’s imagination is what brought him to the world’s attention and has kept him there. He concluded these two years of artistic work by composing one of Russia’s most famous children’s stories, “Kashtanka,” and the start of what became a renowned novella. After a blue and dreary summer of 1887, he wrote a four-act play in the space of two weeks. In his short stories he identified with a variety of characters: doctors, patients, actors, drivers, writers, artists, children, women, men, drunks, religious folk, Moscovites, Petersburgers, exiles, villagers, judges, criminal investigators, cheats, lovers, midwives, business owners and animals. Weary and suffering from various ailments including the tuberculosis he had contracted at twenty-four, he took a long trip south in the spring of 1887 to Taganrog, where he had grown up. Having written, he was exhausted, but in the midst of writing, whether venting and making jokes in letters or amusing himself and us with stories, his senses seemed fully alive, consciousness and imagination flowing together.

He carried on lively, frank, funny correspondence with editors, friends, and his older brothers. He mentored other writers with matter-of-fact encouragement and brilliant criticism. In the winter of 1886, he became engaged and unengaged to be married. Chekhov treated patients in his office at his family’s residence, and also made house calls he lived with and supported his parents and younger siblings. Meanwhile, three hours a day, six days a week, Dr. In these two years, three volumes of his short stories were published. The young author was, to his surprise and occasional embarrassment, famous admired by, among others, Russia’s literary giants Lev Tolstoy and Nikolay Leskov.

In 1887, he published sixty-four short stories. In 1886, the twenty-six-year-old Moscow doctor published 112 short stories, humor pieces, and articles. Reading the stories, we are as close as we can be to being in his company. Anton Chekhov’s biography in 1886-1887 is captured almost completely in the writing that he was doing.

Selected stories of anton chekhov