Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov is considered one of the great writers and playwrights of the 19th century, and one of the greatest fiction writers of all time. Though perhaps best known for plays like The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov wrote over 70 short stories and also worked as a medical doctor throughout his life, often exclusively for poor patients at little or no charge. He also supported his family, which struggled with debts left to them by Chekhov’s father, both from his medical practice and from writing short, humorous sketches under pseudonyms. With the encouragement of editors and fellow writers, Chekhov began to compose more serious stories under his own name and eventually broke into playwriting. He contracted tuberculosis around 1884, which prompted him to take several trips for his health that influenced his writing—one to Ukraine in 1887, after which he wrote The Steppe, and another to Yalta in 1897, where he then moved to try to improve his health. “The Lady with the Dog,” sometimes translated as “The Lady with the Lapdog” or “The Lady with the Toy Dog,” is one of the more famous stories he wrote while in Yalta. In 1901 he married the actress Olga Knipper but they largely lived apart, him in Yalta for his health and her in Moscow to pursue her career. After his death in 1904 from complications related to his tuberculosis, Chekhov’s stories began to be translated into English. His work has gone through several periods of critical re-evaluation, with voices as diverse as Raymond Carver and Virginia Woolf praising the subtly of his writing style and his ability to lay bare the complexity of human emotions. Chekhov’s plays also had an influence on the “Method” acting movement, and in particular Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio.