Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904, Russian short-story writer, dramatist, and physician, b. Taganrog. The son of a grocer and grandson of a serf, Chekhov earned enduring international acclaim for his stories and plays. His early works, broad humorous sketches and tales published under a pseudonym, were written to support himself and his family while he studied for his medical degree in Moscow. Under this strain he contracted tuberculosis, which ravaged him all his life.

Chekhov's first large collection, Motley Stories (1886), brought him critical respect; it was followed by the collections At Twilight (1887) and Stories (1888), from which "The Steppe" earned him the Pushkin Prize. Chekhov's many hundreds of stories concern human folly, the tragedy of trivialities, and the oppression of banality. His characters are drawn with compassion and humor in a clear, simple style noted for realistic detail. In his plays, too, Chekhov emphasizes character and mood; his plots describe the desolation of lonely people and the misunderstandings that accrue from self-absorption and desperation. His focus on internal drama was an innovation that had enormous influence on both Russian and foreign writing.

An active humanitarian, Chekhov wrote The Island of Sakhalin (1890), a study of convicts' lives that helped to effect social reform; as a physician he fought two cholera epidemics. He wrote several farces related to his early stories, but his first major staged drama was Ivanov (1887). His success as a dramatist was assured when the Moscow Art Theater took his works and built superb productions, beginning with The Seagull in 1898. They followed this with his masterpieces Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904), his last great work.

Among the finest works of Chekhov's later years are his hundreds of letters to notable contemporaries. For the final three years of his life Chekhov was happily married to Olga Knipper, an actress with the Moscow Art company. Although they were often separated, they were together at a German health resort when he died, at 44. Most of Chekhov's works are available in English. Several lesser-known works appear in Avrahm Yarmolinsky's The Unknown Chekhov (1954) and 38 previously untranslated stories were published in The Undiscovered Chekhov (1999).

Bibliography

See his letters, ed. by S. Karlinsky (1973) and A. Yarmolinsky (1973), Chekhov-Knipper letters, ed. by J. Benedetti (1998); M. Chekhov, Anton Chekhov: A Brother's Memoir (2009); biographies by D. Magarshack (1952, repr. 1960), E. J. Simmons (1962), D. Gillès (tr. 1968), and D. Rayfield (1998); studies of his prose by T. G. Winner (1966) and V. L. Smith (1973); studies of his plays by M. Valency (1966), J. L. Styan (1971), D. Magarshack (1973), R. Gilman (1995), and V. Kataev (2002); critical essays, ed. by R. L. Jackson (1967).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.
Licensed from Columbia University Press
Chekhov, Anton (Pavlovich)

Anton Chekhov, 1902.

(born Jan. 29, 1860, Taganrog, Russia—died July 14/15, 1904, Badenweiler, Ger.) Russian playwright and short-story writer. The son of a former serf, he supported his family by writing popular comic sketches while studying medicine in Moscow. While practicing as a doctor, he had his first full-length play, Ivanov (1887), produced, but it was not well-received. He took up serious themes with stories such as “The Steppe” (1888) and “A Dreary Story” (1889); later stories include “The Black Monk” (1894) and “Peasants” (1897). He converted his second long play, The Wood Demon (1889), into the masterpiece Uncle Vanya (1897). His play The Seagull (1896) was badly received until its successful revival in 1899 by Konstantin Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre. He moved to the Crimea to nurse his eventually fatal tuberculosis, and there he wrote his great last plays, Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904), for the Moscow Art Theatre. Chekhov's plays, which take a tragicomic view of the staleness of provincial life and the passing of the Russian gentry, received international acclaim after their translation into English and other languages, and as a short-story writer he is still regarded as virtually unmatched.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
List of playwrights
List of notable playwrights.

See also Literature; Drama; List of playwrights by nationality and date of birth; Lists of authors

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