CHEKHOV STORIES ON THIS SITE

Grigory Ivanovitch is an experienced doctor who, while doing his rounds at the hospital, is so upset with his incompetent assistant for being drunk on duty that he utterly loses his temper and strikes the fellow. The consequences of this act on the life of the hospital and on the career of the doctor and the assistant, and the play of forces at work in the hospital organisation and in the judicial system – for there are judicial consequences – are the marrow of this story with a strong (...)

During his medical studies in the Moscow State Medical University between 1879 and 1884, Chekhov regularly contributed captions to humorous drawings in various literary publications.
You will find below a selection of works from this interesting and little-known aspect of the master’s literary activity.. TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. FROM THE THEATER WORLD 2. AT A PARTY 3. POETIC DREAMS 4. THREE DRAWINGS 5. IN THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD 6. A WOMAN’S CLASSIC 7. A MODERN MARGUERITE 8. HOW LOVELY YOU (...)

Podgorin, a thirty-year-old lawyer, receives a mail from Tatyana and Varya, two young women of his age with whom he’d been very close ten years previously, asking him to come for a visit to Tatyana’s family home where she lives with husband and two young children and her young sister Nadezhda. He feels obliged to go, knowing that the husband is a wastrel and a profligate and that they probably have financial problems. Which turns out to be very much the case, as they are bankrupt, the (...)

A group of people gathers on a grassy hillside to listen to a concert. It begins with the singing of the cuckoo, then a wide variety of creatures join in, and after an intermission the star of the evening gives a performance that reduces the audience, human and natural, to a stunned and appreciative silence. But the concerts ends on a sadder note.
This charming short story was written while Chekhov was still studying for his medical degree.
It has been translated here specially for (...)

Twelve tales with a distinctive mix of humour and cynicism that have been translated into English here for the first time ever.
1. THE CONFESSION (Исповедь) (1883) Grigory Kuzmich is delighted to have been appointed treasurer and is pleasantly surprised to find that everyone’s suddenly very amiable with him. Not only do they invite him to visit their homes to meet their daughters, but they always come to his parties – and borrow increasingly large amount of money from him. So he borrows (...)

More outstanding stories by the most prolific short-story writer in the history of world literature. CONTENTS
1. GREEN SCYTHE (Зелёная Коса) (1882) The narrator and his friends love to spend their summers on the Black Sea with with the vivacious Olya. Life is gay there but there’s a problem: Olga had promised her father on his deathbed that she would marry Chaykhidzev, son of his best friend, whereas she was secretly in love with her neighbour Lieutenant Egorov. So the narrator and his (...)

A further selection of the best stories of the great Russian writer that have so far remained untranslated into English. CONTENTS
1. LOST BUSINESS (Пропащее дело) (1882) The narrator recounts how on a lovely spring day he’d gone to see his beloved Varya to empty his heart and soul to her. He’d mumbled a few phrases while his beloved looked at him encouragingly, and then he’d explained to her how poor he was and although she mentioned that she had a dowry, carried away by his flame for (...)

We have selected here fourteen of the best stories in the body of to-date-untranslated stories of the great Russian short-story writer, playwright and doctor.
Most, but not all of them are written in the light, humorous tone that characterised the stories he wrote during his student days and shortly afterwards – Chekhov’s works began taking on a distinctly deeper tone when he started practicing medicine, mostly in poverty-stricken village districts, and also and notably after having (...)

Savya, the aged priest of a little town, is delighted to by the visit of his son Alexander, a celebrated Moscow lawyer whom he hadn’t seen for fifteen years since he had sent him off to university in Moscow. The father can’t relate to the big-city life that the son has been leading: he thinks that the son must earn a thousand roubles a year to have such nice clothes and a gold watch, and the son throws out when he asks him about it that he usually gets thirty thousand. He tells his father (...)

On a stormy evening Tikhon’s tavern is crowded with coachmen and pilgrims, and a forty-year-old man in shoddy clothes at the bar is ceaselessly begging for a glass of vodka, eventually proposing his worn-out coat in exchange. Tikhon contemptuously refuses to give him any more vodka until a coachman arrives who recognizes the man as his former master, and we learn the unhappy and female cause of his downfall.
A dramatic story with a most convincing atmosphere, a remarkable achievement for (...)