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Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

(1860-1904)



was a Russian physician and writer of short stories and plays.

As Chekhov wrote to a friend, "Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other. Though it is irregular, it is less boring this way, and besides, neither of them loses anything through my infidelity."

We are now pleased to host 201 stories by Chekhov, the entire collections translated by Constance Garnett, as scanned and annotated by James Rusk. See http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/ac/jr/index.htm or http://www.freespeech.org/chekhov/ -- Chekhov readers owe James Rusk an eternal debt for this tremendous work!

We also present in the following listing some of these stories in other formats, in other English translations, and some stories originally scanned by others. (The numbers are arbitrary and provided for your convenience in this list.) We have listed them in approximately the order of publication or composition.

  1. A Naughty Boy (1883)
  2. A Slander (1883)
  3. Out of Sorts (1884)
  4. The Tutor (1884)
  5. The Cook's Wedding (1885)
  6. Small Fry (1885)
  7. A Horsey Name (1885)
  8. Sorrow (1885)
  9. Misery (1886)
  10. The Chorus Girl (1886)
  11. A Trifle from Real Life (A Trifling Occurrence) (1886)
  12. A Nightmare (1886)
  13. A Gentleman Friend (1886)
  14. Easter Eve (1886)
  15. The Requiem (1886)
  16. Grisha (1886)
  17. Vanka (1886)
  18. An Incident (1886)
  19. Ivan Matveyitch (1886)
  20. A Joke (1886)
  21. Panic Fears (1886)
  22. The Mire (1886)
  23. On the Road (1886)
  24. The Orator (1886)
  25. A Trivial Incident (1886)
  26. The Telephone (1886)
  27. Bliss (?)
  28. The Father of a Family (?)
  29. A Matter of Classics (?)
  30. The Safety Match (?)
  31. A Lady's Story (1887)
  32. Champagne (1887)
  33. The Letter (1887)
  34. A Transgression (1887)
  35. A Father (1887)
  36. In the Coach-house (1887)
  37. Bad Weather (1887)
  38. The Cattle Dealers (1887)
  39. In Passion Week (1887)
  40. The Lottery Ticket (1887)
  41. Shrove Tuesday (1887)
  42. The Boys (1887?)
  43. Verotchka (Verochka) (1887)
  44. Volodia (1887)
  45. Zinotchka (1887)
  46. Sleepy (Sleepy-Eye) (1888)
  47. The Beauties (1888)
  48. The Shoemaker and the Devil (1888)
  49. A Nervous Breakdown (1889)
  50. The Bet (1889)
  51. In Exile (1892)
  52. After the Theatre (1892)
  53. Ward No. 6 (1892)
  54. The Grasshopper (1892)
  55. Rothschild's Fiddle (1894)
  56. The Student (1894)
  57. The Head-Gardener's Story (1894)
  58. The Black Monk (1894)
  59. At a Country House (1894)
  60. The Murder (1895)
  61. The Schoolmistress (1897)
  62. The Petcheneg (The Savage) (1897)
  63. Gooseberries (1898)
  64. Ionitch (1898)
  65. The Darling (1899)
  66. Lady with Lapdog (The Lady with the Dog, or, better, "The Puppy Lady") (1899)
  67. On Official Duty (1899)
  68. At Christmas Time (1900)
  69. The Bishop (1902)
  70. The Betrothed (1903)

Sarah Berhardt Comes to Town, copyright 1998 Peter Constantine, from The Undiscovered Chekhov: Thirty-Eight New Stories by Anton Chekhov, Seven Stories Press, ISBN: 1-888363-76-2 (at the New York Times site, free subscription required).

Here are now some Chekhov plays:

We are now pleased to present a book, Reminiscences of Chekhov, in three parts, by Maxim Gorky, Alexander Kuprin, and I. A. Bunin. This translation from 1921 was entered by MariLi Pooler.


Chekhov at 20 began writing short pieces for newspapers and magazines and after some critical recognition and encouragement wrote many serious stories. He bought a country estate and served as a doctor while he continued writing.

Most of his great plays are still performed, such as: The Sea Gull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1896), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904). You may find them in Russian on the World Wide Web. See in Project Gutenberg presentations also translations of The Sea Gull and Ivanoff.

Chekhov died July 2, 1904, (Old Style, July 15 New Style) in Germany, of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Vladimir Nabokov wrote:

"What really attracted the Russian reader was that in Chekhov's heroes he recognized the Russian idealist. . . a man who combined the deepest human decency of which man is capable with an almost ridiculous inability to put his ideals and principles into action; a man devoted to moral beauty, the welfare of his people, the welfare of the universe, but unable in his private life to do anything useful; frittering away his provincial existence in a haze of utopian dreams; knowing exactly what is good, what is worth while living for, but at the same time sinking lower and lower in the mud of a humdrum existence, unhappy in love, hopelessly inefficient in everything--a good man who cannot make good. This is the character that passes--in the guise of a doctor, a student, a village teacher, many other professional people--all through Chekhov's stories."

We don't pretend to provide a complete Chekhov home page here.
Instead, please see Yvan Russell's Chekhov home page mirrored here -- formerly at http://www.winnipeg.freenet.mb.ca/~vbu053/Anton_Chekhov.html
-- or for more:

Chekhov wrote to editor A. N. Pleshcheev, Oct. 4, 1888:

"I am afraid of those who will look for tendenciousness between the lines and who are determined to see me either as a liberal or a conservative. I am neither a liberal nor a conservative, neither a gradualist nor a monk nor an indifferentist. I would like to be nothing more than a free artist, and I regret that God did not give me the gift to be one. I hate falseness and coercion in all their forms . . . . Pharisaism, stupidity and arbitrariness reign not merely in merchants' houses and police stations: I see them in science, in literature, among the young. That is why I have no particular passion for either policemen or butchers or scientists or writers or the young. I consider brand-names and labels a prejudice. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom, freedom from force and falseness in whatever form they express themselves. That's the platform I'd subscribe to if I were a great artist."


Please visit Chekhov Now, a project of the LITE company. This festival in New York City presents 13 original Chekhov productions from November 1 to November 19th, 2000, at the Connelly Theater, 220 E. 4th Street. Or call +1 212 414 7773, or e-mail anton@chekhovnow.org.


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Eldritch Press - by Eric Eldred