Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian doctor, short-story writer and playwright. His stories, such as The Lady with the Dog, and his four great plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, transformed both the short story and modern drama with their subtle portraits of ordinary lives, quiet longing and missed chances.
Genres
drama, novels and stories
Works
The Lady with the Dog
The grocer's grandson
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in 1860 in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov. His grandfather had been a serf who bought his freedom; his father, a strict and violent grocer, went bankrupt in 1876 and fled to Moscow with the family, leaving Anton behind to finish school.
In 1879 Chekhov joined his family in Moscow and began studying medicine. To support his parents and siblings he wrote hundreds of short comic sketches for humorous magazines, under pseudonyms such as Antosha Chekhonte.
Doctor and writer
Qualified as a doctor in 1884, Chekhov practised medicine all his life, often treating peasants for free; he said medicine was his lawful wife and literature his mistress. Encouraged by the writer Dmitry Grigorovich, he took his writing more seriously, and in 1888 received the Pushkin Prize.
In 1890, already ill with tuberculosis, he travelled across Siberia to the penal colony of Sakhalin Island, where he interviewed thousands of convicts and wrote a book denouncing their conditions. He then bought an estate at Melikhovo, near Moscow, where he built schools and fought a cholera epidemic.
The plays
The Seagull failed disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg in 1896, but triumphed in 1898 at the new Moscow Art Theatre of Konstantin Stanislavsky. Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard followed. In 1901 he married the actress Olga Knipper.
His illness forced him to spend his winters in Yalta, in the Crimea, where he met Tolstoy and Gorky. In 1904, soon after the premiere of The Cherry Orchard, he went to Badenweiler, a German spa, where he died in July at forty-four.
Anecdotes
A glass of champagne
According to his wife Olga Knipper, in the night of his death in Badenweiler the doctor ordered champagne, as was the custom among German doctors with a dying colleague. Chekhov said in German that he was dying, drank the glass, remarked that he had not had champagne for a long time, and lay down quietly.
A train for oysters
Chekhov's body was taken back to Moscow in a refrigerated railway wagon marked For Oysters. His friend Maxim Gorky was indignant at the absurd detail, which might have come from one of Chekhov's own stories.
Frequently asked questions
What are Chekhov's most famous plays?
The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1899), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904).
What is Chekhov's gun?
A principle of storytelling attributed to Chekhov: if a gun is shown hanging on the wall in the first act, it must be fired by the last; every element of a story should serve a purpose.
Was Chekhov really a doctor?
Yes. He qualified in medicine in 1884 and practised throughout his life, often treating poor patients without charge.