Chekhov Large and Small

Bob Blaisdell, editor of Chekhov’s "The Lady with the Dog" and Other Love Stories, reviews Freedom from Violence and Lies: Anton Chekhov’s Life and Writings, by Michael C. Finke, and Anton Chekhov: A Life, by Donald Rayfield, at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

"Chekhov’s letters, where he could be private and intimate, contrast quite a lot with the fiction (he wrote several hundred short stories, only — comparatively only — a half-dozen full-length plays). In correspondence, he tried to break down any formality; he almost always joked with people from the first letter to the last. He frustrated girlfriends by his reluctance to get serious (Must you always tease and kid?). When he saw death from his tuberculosis closing in, he finally married Olga Knipper, who was deeply engaged in her acting career in Moscow and thus not always available to him, as he resided half the year in Yalta, where the warm weather provided a better defense against his disease."

See "The Darling" in volume 3 and "The Cherry Orchard" in volume 4 of Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963), and Uncle Vania in Great Books of the Western World (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 59.