Leaves Moscow for Sakhalin in April, reaches the island on July 11/23, spends three months there and is back in Moscow on December 9/21. Gloomy People, a collect on of stories.
Travels in Western Europe, visitine Vienna, Ven- ice, Florence, Rome, Paris. The Duel, a short novel, his last contribution to Novoye vremya.
January: Active in organizing relief for famine vic- tims.
February: Acauires an estate near the village of Melihovo in tne province of Moscow and settles there with his parents.
Summer: Acts as medical supervisor of a rural district in a campaign against an impending epi- demic of cholera.
Becomes a contributor to Russkaya mysl, a populist monthly, and to a liberal daily.
His health worsens. Travels in the Crimea and in Southern Europe. Tales and stories.
1894-97 Takes an active interest in and partly finances the construction of schools at Melihovo and in two neighboring villages.
June: The Island of Sakhalin; travel notes (serial- ized in 1893-94 ).
August: Visits Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana.
Aut^n: Revisits the Crimea and the Caucasus. October 17/29: Premiere of The Sea Gull, which is a fiasco.
1897-98 March: Has a severe pulmonary hemorrhage.
Spends the autumn and the following winter and spring in Nice. The Peasants. My Life. The Plays (including Uncle Vanya).
In Nice, follows the Dreyfus case, siding with Zola. September: On the advice of his doctors gives up the practice of medicine and settles in a villa of his o^ in a suburb of Yalta.
November: Starts corresponding with Maxim Gorky.
December 17/29:First performance of The Sea Gull by the Moscow Art Theatre company is an immense success.
Sells the right to publish all his works to A. F. Marx for 75,000 rubles. Ten volumes of his col- lected works came out in 1899-1901.
October 26/November 7: Premiere of Uncle Vanya in the Moscow Art Theatre.
January: Elected, with Tolstoy, honorary member of the newly created Section of Belles Lettres of the Academy of Sciences. Spends part of the win- ter of 1900-01 on the Riviera.
January 31/February 12: Premiere of The Three Sisters at the Moscow Art Theatre.
May 25/June 7: Marries Olga Knipper. Autumn: Sees a good deal of Tolstoy, Gorky, Ku- prin, Bunin, who were then staying in or near Yalta.
His health continues to deteriorate. September: Resigns his membership in the Acad- emy as a protest against Gorky's exclusion from it.
Spends the spring and part of the summer in Mos- cow and in the country near Moscow. Autumn: Becomes an editor of Russkaya mysl. "Betrothed," his last story.
January 17/30: First performance of The Cherry Orchard at the Moscow Art Theatre.
June 3/16: Goes, with his wife, to Badenweiler, a German health resort.
July 2/15: Dies there and a week later is buried in Moscow.
Selected Bibliography: WORKS BY CHEKHOV
A few of the stories appeared in English and American magazines during the fi.rst decade of this century. But not until the publication of The Tales of Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett (London, 1916-1922; New York, 1916- 1923, 13 vols.) did Chekhov cease to be an obscure figure in the Anglo-American world. Not that all his fiction is con- tained in that edition. A few of the omitted pieces, notably the four in the present volume, are admirable. Many of the others, largely early work, are without distinction, but quite a number of them, translated by various hands, found their way into print. A. E. Chamot Englished The Shooting Pariif (London, 1926), a full-length thriller that was eventually made into a movie. The Unknown Chekhov, edited and translated by Avrahm Yarmolinsky (New York, 1954), con- tains, in addition to fiction not rendered by Mrs. Garnett, Chekhov's remarkable account of his journey to Sakhalin, not previously translated. His monograph on the penal colony there has been rendered by Luba and Michael Terpak and published as The Island ( 1'\ew York, 1967). Selections from the Garnett version of the stories have been reprinted in numerous collections and anthologies. Selected Stories, translated by Jessie Coulson (London, New York, 1963 ), and Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories, translated by David Magarshack (Baltimore, 1964 ), exemplify the effort made in recent years to retranslate the stories.
The plays, too, were translated by Constance Garnett (London, 1923, New York, 1924, 2 vols.). The same text was reprinted (New York, 1930) with a preface by Eva Le Later editions of the collected plays include
Best Plys, translated and with an introduction by Stark Young (New York, 1956); the Penguin Plays, translated by Elisaveta Fen (Baltimore, 1959, reissued in 1964); Six Plays of Chekhov, new English version by Robert W. Corrigan (New York, 1962). Mention should also be made of Brute and Other Farces, new versions by Eric Bentley and Theo- dore Hoffman (New York, 1958).
The plays have attracted more translators than h&ve the stories. There are even four renderings of Chekhov's first work for the stage, written at the age of twenty-one and known as Platonov (the hero's name), since the early draft di.scovered after the author's death—he had destroyed the clean copy—lacks a title page. The full text of this wretched melodrama has been translated by David Magarshak (New York, 1964). As for The Cherry Orchard, it exists in nearly a dozen translations. The latest ones are: "English version by John Gielgud, introduction by Michel Saint-Denis" (New York, 1963); "a new translation by Ronald Hingley"—to- gether with Uncle Vania (London, New York, 1965); a trans- lation by Tyrone Guthrie and Leonid Kipnis (Minneapolis, 1965); and a translation by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, with ample commentaries by various hands (New York, 1965). The Wisteria Trees, by Joshua Logan (New York, 1950), is an adaptation of The Cherry Orchard. John Gielgud is also the author of a version of Ivanov, based on a translation by Ariadne Nikolaelf (London, 1966).
A considerable proportion of Chekhov's correspondence is available in: Selectea Letters, edited by Lillian Hellman, translated by Sidonie Lederer (New York, 1955); Letters by Anton Tchekhov to His Family and Friends, translated by Constance Garnett (1\:ew York, 1920); and Letters of Anton Tchekhov to Olga L. Knipper, also translated by Constance Garnett (New York, 1925; reprinted in 1966). Then, too, there is Letters on the Short Story, the Drama and other Literary Topics, selected and edited by Louis S. Friedland (New York, 1924). A welcome addition to Chekhov literature is The Personal Papers of Anton Chekhov, introduced by Matthew Josephson (New York, 1948). The volume contains Chekhov's notebook, 1892-1904, his diary, 1896-1903, and "Selected letters on writing, writers, and the theatre, 1882-1904."