R. L. Jackson (ed.), Reading Chekhov’s Text (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1993).
S. Koteliansky (tr., ed.), Anton Chekhov: Literary and Theatrical Reminiscences (New York: Blom, 1968).
Virginia Llewellyn-Smith, Chekhov and the Lady with the Little Dog (London: Oxford University Press, 1973).
Carolina de Maegd-Soëp, Chekhov and Women (Columbus: Slavica, 1987).
Charles Meister, Chekhov Criticism 1880 Through 1986 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1988).
V. S. Pritchett, Chekhov: A Spirit Set Free (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988).
Donald Rayfield, Anton Chekhov: A Life (London: HarperCollins, 1997).
Savely Senderovich and Munir Sendich (eds), Anton Chekhov Rediscovered: A Collection of New Studies with a Comprehensive Bibliography (East Lansing, Mich.: Russian Language Journal, 1987).
L. Shestov, Anton Chekhov and Other Essays (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966).
E. J. Simmons, Chekhov: A Biography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966, and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
C. J. G. Turner, Time and Temporal Structure in Chekhov (Department of Russian Language and Literature, University of Birmingham, 1994).
R. and N. Wellek (eds), Chekhov: New Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1984), anthology of essays with useful bibliography.
T. Winner, Chekhov and his Prose (New York: Holt, 1966).
Nick Worrall, File on Chekhov (London: Methuen, 1986).
ARTICLES
Petr Bitsilli, ‘From Chekhonte to Chekhov’ in V. Erlich (ed.), Twentieth-Century Russian Literary Criticism (London: Yale University Press, 1975), 317 pp.
Thomas Eekman, ‘The Narrator and the Hero in Chekhov’s Prose’ in California Slavic Studies, 8, Berkeley, California (1975), pp. 93–129.
M. Fink, ‘The Hero’s Descent to the Underworld in Chekhov’ in The Russian Review, 53:1, Columbus, Ohio (January 1994), pp. 67–80.
WORKS ON INDIVIDUAL STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
‘The Bishop’
N. A. Nilsson Studies in Chekhov’s Narrative Technique: ‘The Steppe’ and ‘The Bishop’ (Stockholm: Alquist & Wiksell, 1968).
Peter Stowell, ‘Chekhov’s “The Bishop”: The Annihilation of Faith and Identity through Time’, Studies in Short Fiction, 12 (1975), pp. 117–22.
‘The Bride’
Robert L. Jackson, ‘“The Betrothed”: Chekhov’s Last Testament’ in Savely Senderovich and Munir Sendich (eds.), Anton Chekhov Rediscovered: A Collection of New Studies with a Comprehensive Bibliography (East Lansing, Mich.: Russian Language Journal, 1987), pp. 51–62.
Gordon McVay, ‘Chekhov’s Last Two Stories: Dreaming of Happiness’ in Nicholas Luker (ed.), The Short Story in Russia, 1900–1917 (Nottingham: Astra Press, 1991), pp. 1–22.
‘The House with the Mezzanine’
Paul Debreczeny, ‘Chekhov’s Use of Impressionism in “The House with the Mansard”’ in Russian Narrative and Visual Art: Varieties of Seeing, ed. Roger Anderson and Paul Debreczeny (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1994), pp. 101–23.
‘In the Ravine’
Paul Debreczeny, ‘The Device of Conspicuous Silence in Tolstoj, Cexov, and Faulkner’ in V. Terras (ed.), American Contributions to the Eighth International Congress of Slavists, Vol. 2: Literature (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1978), pp. 125–45.
Hugh McLean, ‘Chekhov’s “In the Ravine”: Six Antipodes’ in W. E. Harkins (ed.), American Contributions to the Sixth International Congress of Slavists, Vol. 2: Literary Contributions (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), pp. 285–305.
‘Ionych’
Alexandar Mihailovic, ‘Eschatology and Entombment in “Ionych”’ in R. L. Jackson (ed.), Reading Chekhov’s Text (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1993), pp. 103–14.
‘The Lady with the Little Dog’
C. R. S. Cockrell, ‘The Lady with the Dog’ in C. R. S. Cockrell et al. (eds.), The Voice of a Giant: Essays on Seven Russian Prose Classics (University of Exeter, 1985), pp. 81–92.
Yael Greenberg, ‘The Presentation of the Unconscious in Chekhov’s “Lady with Lapdog”’, Modern Language Review, 86:1 (1991), pp. 126–30.
‘Man in a Case’, ‘Gooseberries’ and ‘About Love’
John Freedman, ‘Narrative Technique and the Art of Story-Telling in Anton Chekhov’s “Little Trilogy”’ in Thomas Eekman (ed.), Critical Essays on Anton Chekhov (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989), pp. 103–11.
David E. Maxwell, ‘The Unity of Chekhov’s “Little Trilogy”’ in Paul Debreczeny and Thomas Eekman (eds.), Chekhov’s Art of Writing (Columbus: Slavica, 1977), pp. 35–53.
‘Peasants’
John Wm. Harrison, ‘Symbolic Action in Chekhov’s “Peasants” and “In the Ravine”’, Modern Fiction Studies, 7:4 (Winter 1961), pp. 369–72.
L. M. O’Toole, ‘Chekhov: The Peasants’ in Structure, Style and Interpretation in the Russian Short Story (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 203–20.
CHRONOLOGY
1836 Gogol’s The Government Inspector
1852 Turgenev’s Sketches from a Hunter’s Album
1860 Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the House of the Dead (1860–61)
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov born on 17 January at Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov, the third son of Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, a grocer, and Yevgeniya Yakovlevna, née Morozova
1861 Emancipation of the serfs by Alexander II. Formation of revolutionary Land and Liberty Movement
1862 Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons
1863–4 Polish revolt. Commencement of intensive industrialization; spread of the railways; banks established; factories built.
Elective District Councils (zemstvos) set up; judicial reform Tolstoy’s The Cossacks (1863)
1865 Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1864) by Leskov, a writer much admired by Chekhov
1866 Attempted assassination of Alexander II by Karakozov
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
1867 Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin
1868 Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot
1868 Chekhov begins to attend Taganrog Gymnasium after wasted year at a Greek school
1869 Tolstoy’s War and Peace
1870 Municipal government reform
1870–71 Franco-Prussian War
1873 Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1873–7)
Chekhov sees local productions of Hamlet and Gogol’s The Government Inspector
1875 Chekhov writes and produces humorous magazine for his brothers in Moscow, The Stammerer, containing sketches of life in Taganrog
1876 Chekhov’s father declared bankrupt and flees to Moscow, followed by family except Chekhov, who is left in Taganrog to complete schooling. Reads Buckle, Hugo and Schopenhauer
1877–8 War with Turkey
1877 Chekhov’s first visit to Moscow; his family living in great hardship
1878 Chekhov writes dramatic juvenilia: full-length drama Father-lessness (MS destroyed), comedy Diamond Cut Diamond and vaudeville Why Hens Cluck (none published)