II.

Life

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the southern Russian town of Taganrog, where his father kept a small general store. In 1879 he entered the University of Moscow to study medicine. While still a student, he began contributing short comic sketches to humor magazines to help support his family. After he finished his studies in 1884 Chekhov practiced medicine, but he continued to write. By 1887 his literary talent had received popular recognition and his writing left little time for his medical practice.

In 1890 Chekhov made an arduous 9650-km (6000-mi) journey across Siberia by train, river steamer, and horse-drawn carriage to conduct a sociological and medical survey in a Russian penal colony on Sakhalin Island, off the eastern coast of Russia. His findings, published in 1893 and 1894 as Ostrov Sakhalin (The Island of Sakhalin), had some influence in moderating the harsh prison rule on the island. In 1891 he purchased Melikhovo, a small estate south of Moscow, where he wrote some of his finest short stories. Chekhov had suffered from tuberculosis for years, and in 1897 he moved to the milder climate of Yalta, on the Black Sea, for health reasons.

The theater had long fascinated Chekhov, but the initial productions of his first major plays failed—Ivanov in 1887 and Chaika (The Seagull) in 1896. His first theatrical triumph came in 1898 with a production of The Seagull by the new and innovative Moscow Art Theater, under director Konstantin Stanislavsky. The Art Theater’s productions of his subsequent plays, Diadia Vanya (1899; Uncle Vanya), Tri sestry (1901; The Three Sisters), and Vishnevyi sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard), established the works as Chekhov’s four masterpieces. In 1901 Chekhov married a young actress named Olga Knipper. His health, meanwhile, had steadily worsened. He died at the German resort of Badenweiler while seeking relief from tuberculosis.