three editions of this work. The 4th edition is used for quotations here and for the purposes of the present discussion.
[4] The Foreword was published for the first time in Literatumoe Nasledstvo (Literary Heritage), Moscow, i960, LXVIII, 260-261.
[5] 3»
Suvorin was a wise and experienced older man and he must have at last realized that these lighthearted and even facetious rejoinders to his earnest advice to marry came from a Chekhov either committed to a bachelor existence because he preferred it or because of some overriding personal reason which he would divulge to no one. Certainly the two women, Lika Mizinova and Lidiya Avilova, with whom his name
4 Catherine the Great, noted for her many love affairs.
[6] The Sea Gull appeared in the December issue of Russian Thought.
[7] Shestakov was a former mayor of Taganrog.
[8] In January, 1897, Stanislavsky had played the role of Smirnov in The Bear at the Korsh Theater.
[9] In her memoirs Avilova claims that she received this note by messenger on March 23. Quite clearly, it was written and delivered the day before. March 23, her birthday, was essential to her narrative. For on that day her younger brother Alexei, who was her confidant, had arranged a party at his house to celebrate the event, which was to be her excuse for getting away from her elder brother and his wife, who were not invited to the party, and thus find an opportunity to visit Chekhov in secrecy.
[10] It appears that Chekhov planned to continue this work with the intention of revealing the often unhappy existence of those peasants who go to the city to seek their fortune. Drafts of two further chapters dealing with this theme have turned up in his papers and were printed in the Soviet edition of his complete works (IX, 480-484). And his notes for this continuation, mingled with entries bearing on the earlier part of Peasants, thus proving the connection between the two parts, have also been published in the Soviet edition (Vol. XII). These two additional chapters and the notes have been translated into English for the first time by Edmund Wilson and published in: Anton Chekhov, Peasants and Other Stories, selected and with a preface by Edmund Wilson, Doubleday Anchor Book, New York, 1956, 281-288.
[11] First published in Niva, September 1898.
[12] The Man in a Shell appeared in Russian Thought for July 1898, and Gooseberries and About Love in its August issue that same year.
[13] Russian Thought, December 1898.
[14] M. P. Chekhova, lz dalyokovo proshlovo (From the Distant Past), Moscow, i960, pp. 167-68.
[15] The last sentence is omitted in the Soviet edition of his complete works and letters. The omitted sentence is to be found in Perepiska A. P. Chekhova i O. L. Knipper (Correspondence of A. P. Chekhov and O. L. Knipper), ed. A. B. Derman, Moscow, 1934, II, 19. It should perhaps be added that similar intimate expressions have also been deleted from this collection.
[16] Л translation of Chekhov's tale, Difficult People, appeared in the collection.
[17] Reviews of the interest in Chekhov's works in the United States and England, containing much bibliographical data, have recently been published in Russian: Thomas G. Winner, "Chekhov v Soedinenykh Shtatakh Ameriki," and M. A. Shere- shevskaya, "Angliiskie pisateli i kritiki 0 Chekhove," in Literatumoe Nasledstvo, Moscow, i960, LXVIII, 777-800, 801-832.
[18] For a treatment of this matter, sec Gleb Struve's "Chekhov and Soviet Doublethink," The New Leader, November 22, 1954, PP. 22-24, and "Chekhov in Communist Censorship," in The Slavonic and East European Review, XXXIII, No. 81, June 1955, pp. 327-341.