Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian playwright, humorist, medical doctor and author. He overcame poverty and serious obstacles in his youth to attain remarkable professional heights and artistic success in his career. Many of his works continue to be seen, read and enjoyed around the world today, owing to their understated wit, unpretentious language, and universal insights into Russian life at the turn of the century.

 

Before his death from tuberculosis, at the age of forty four, Chekhov was already regarded as one of the leading storytellers of his generation, a contemporary with Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev and other noted Russian intellectuals and authors of his own time.

 

Chekhov's numerous short stories (you may find several translated to English here on this site) exhibit different strains of the mature writing style of the author. It is this style, heralded by an accomplished, though tragically cut-short life and extensive body of literary work, which has inspired a meaningful legacy. Chekhov's writing is often portrayed as quintessential to a "golden age" of Russian Literature.

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