1892–1893. Severe famines in the grain-growing provinces in the south and along the Volga.
Chekhov acts as head of the district sanitary commission during the cholera epidemic, combats the famine, treats the poorest peasants for free.
Publishes eleven stories, including “My Wife,” “The Grasshopper,” “Ward No. 6,” as well as the one-act farce The Celebration.
1893. Dalliance with Lika Mizinova, whom he decides not to marry, but who sees herself as a prototype for Nina in The Seagull. The Island of Sakhalin published serially. Publishes “An Anonymous Story” and “Big Volodya and Little Volodya.”
1894. Second trip to Italy and to Paris. Health worsens. Publishes “The Student,” “Rothschild’s Fiddle,” “The Head Gardener’s Story,” “The Literature Teacher,” “The Black Monk,” and “At a Country House.”
Alexander III dies and is succeeded by his son, the conservative and vacillating Nicholas II.
1895. The Island of Sakhalin published. Chekhov meets Lev Tolstoy at his estate Yasnaya Polyana.
Chekhov writes The Seagull, publishes “Three Years,” “Ariadne,” “His Wife,” “Whitebrow,” “Murder,” and “Anna Round the Neck.”
1896. Chekhov sponsors the construction of a primary school in the village of Talezh. Serial publication of “My Life” and “The House with a Mansard.”
October 17. The premiere of The Seagull at the Alexandra Theatre in St. Petersburg fails. Chekhov flees during the second act.
October 21. Relative success of the play at its second performance.
1896–1897. Strikes of factory workers lead to a law limiting adult work to eleven and a half hours a day.
1897. The first All-Russian Congress of Stage Workers meets in Moscow to argue questions of trade conditions and artistic principles.
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko found the Moscow Art Theatre.
Chekhov sponsors the construction of a primary school in the village of Novosyolky. Participates in the All-Russian census of the population. Father dies.
March-April. Hospitalized with first acute attack of pulmonary tuberculosis. Reads Maurice Maeterlinck.
September. Travels to France for medical treatment.
Uncle Vanya, Ivanov, The Seagull, and one-act plays published, as well as stories “Peasants,” “The Savage,” “At Home,” and “In the Cart.”
1898. Thirteen thousand students at Moscow University go on strike to protest repressive moves on the part of the administration; orders are given to enlist them in the army.
May. Chekhov returns from abroad. Relations with Suvorin strained in connection with the Dreyfus trial.
September. Settles in Yalta after suffering a pulmonary hemorrhage. Publishes the stories “Calling on Friends,” “Gooseberries,” “About Love,” “A Case History,” and “Ionych.”
December 17. The Seagull, staged by Stanislavsky, is revived with great success at the Moscow Art Theatre.
1899. Theatres in Kiev, Kharkov, and Nizhny Novgorod play Uncle Vanya. Chekhov decides to turn it into a short novel, but does not. Offered to the Maly, Uncle Vanya is considered offensive to professors and is turned down.
Tolstoy’s Resurrection and Gorky’s Foma Gordeev published.
Chekhov attends a performance of The Seagull in Yalta. Sells all rights to his works to the publisher A. F. Marks for 75,000 rubles (in current purchasing power, approximately $81,000). Begins to edit his complete works. Awarded Order of St. Stanislas, second class, for work in education. Publishes “On Official Business,” “Lady with Lapdog,” “The Darling,” and “The New Villa.”
June. Sells his estate in Melikhovo. Has a house built in Yalta.
October 26. Premiere of Uncle Vanya at the Art Theatre.
1900. January. Elected to honorary membership in the Literary division of the Academy of Sciences. Publishes “In the Ravine” and “At Christmas.”
April. The Art Theatre plays Uncle Vanya and The Seagull in Sevastopol, in the presence of the author.
August-December. Writes Three Sisters. Finishes the play in Nice.
1901. January-February. Trip to Italy.
January 31. Premiere of Three Sisters at the Moscow Art Theatre with considerable success.
May 25. Marries the actress Olga Knipper, who plays Masha.
The Marxist journal Life, which publishes Gorky, is banned. Gorky is expelled from Nizhny Novgorod.
1902. Chekhov publishes “The Bishop.” Complete works published in eleven volumes. Awarded Griboedov Prize of Society of Dramatic Authors and Opera Composers for Three Sisters. Begins The Cherry Orchard.
March. Olga Knipper suffers miscarriage.
August. Resigns in protest from the Academy of Sciences when Gorky’s election is nullified at the tsar’s behest.
Gorky writes The Lower Depths.
1903. At a Congress in London, the Social Democratic Working-man’s Party is taken over by the radical Bolshevist wing, led by Vladimir Lenin.
Second edition of Chekhov’s complete works published in sixteen volumes.
Publishes his last story, “Betrothed,” in the magazine Everybody’s.
June. The censor rules that his plays cannot be performed in people’s theaters, low-priced theater for the working class.
September. The Cherry Orchard is finished. Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky are enthusiastic. Chekhov attends rehearsals.
An atrocious pogrom occurs in Kishinyov, with 47 dead and 2,000 families ruined.
1904. Chekhov’s health deteriorates.
January 14 or 15. Attends a rehearsal of The Cherry Orchard.
January 17. Premiere at the Art Theatre, where a celebration in his honor is held.
Spring. A new, grave attack of tuberculosis.
April 2. First performance of Orchard in St. Petersburg a great success, greater than in Moscow, according to Nemirovich and Stanislavsky.
June 1. Publication of the play in a separate edition by Marks.
June 3. Departure for Germany with Olga Knipper.
July 2/15. Dies in Badenweiler.
July 9/22. Buried in Novo-devichy cemetery in Moscow.
The Mensheviks drive the Bolsheviks from the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Working-man’s Party, but drop out the following year, leaving the field to the Bolsheviks.
The Russo-Japanese war breaks out.
1909. First performance of a Chekhov play in English: The Seagull, translated by George Calderon, at the Glasgow Repertory Theatre.
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
The texts on which these translations are based are those in A. P. Chekhov, Polnoe sobranie sochineniy i pisem v tridtsati tomakh [Complete Works and Letters in 30 Volumes], ed. N. F. Belchikov et al. (Moscow: Nauka, 1974–1984). The Russian texts of the plays were drawn from the latest versions published in Chekhov’s lifetime and subject to his revision.