Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.5
Word count
630K words
Chapters
63

Tags

English Originals Essays and MiscellanyForeign Literature Literary ArchivesFamily BondsLove EntanglementsDaily ReflectionsLettersExotic Culture

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends by Anton Pavlovich ChekhovAuthor: Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904,Language: English, Class: PG: Language and Literatures: Slavic (including Russian), Languages and Literature, Release Date: Sep 1, 2004

Editor's review

This book is a selection of Chekhov's letters to family and friends, published in English by Project Gutenberg. Unlike his fiction and plays, letters reveal Chekhov's tone in daily life: concern for family, mundane matters of writing and publishing, records of travel and health, and occasional humor and resignation. These letters offer first-hand material for understanding the background of his literary work and convey a side of late nineteenth-century Russian intellectual life. There is no need to seek a continuous plot; the book suits fragmented browsing or thematic reading around specific years or recipients. It is valuable for readers studying the relationship between Chekhov's life and work, while general readers may treat it as an entry point to the writer's authentic voice. Note that the epistolary format is loose, with uneven information density; some content requires notes and background knowledge for full understanding.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read a short biography or chronology of Chekhov first, then select letters in chronological order to understand context.
  2. Read by recipient to observe differences in his tone with family versus friends.
  3. Mark passages on writing, publishing, and travel for later reference.
  4. Read a few letters at a time; no need to read straight through—keep a relaxed pace.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63

FAQ

Are these letters suitable as an introduction to Chekhov? Not really as a first Chekhov book. Letters lack the complete context of the works themselves; it is better to read a few short stories or plays first, then return to the letters, which makes the life details and creative clues easier to understand.
Is the English edition of the letters difficult to read? The language of letters is usually more colloquial than literary works, but vocabulary related to nineteenth-century Russian life and publishing may require lookup. Readers with college-level English reading ability who are willing to consult background materials should find it accessible.
Can this book be used to study Chekhov's creative work? It can serve as supplementary material. Content on writing plans, publishing matters, and living conditions helps explain the background of his works, but it should not be used as a sole basis for research; read it alongside biographies, annotated editions, and the texts themselves.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904 Author

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) was a renowned Russian short-story writer and playwright. The collection holds forty of his works, including Uncle Vanya, The Sea-Gull, The Schoolmistress, and Other Stories, The Witch, and Other Stories, as well as a compilation of his short stories and his letters. His plays are often set in country life, revealing beneath its quiet surface the characters' inner sorrows and hopes; his short stories are concise and restrained, uncovering human nature and the spirit of the age through ordinary incidents. Though his works here are often classed as inspirational growth, they are better seen as profound observations of life's predicaments. Public information is limited, so biographical details are omitted.