Anton Chekhov. Biography.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) is an outstanding Russian playwright and short-story writer. 
Born in Taganrog, Russia, Anton Chekhov moved to Moscow in 1879 to become a medical doctor.  He started writing short humorous stories and sketches for newspapers/magazines while studying.  After the graduation he worked as a MD and kept writing. His works of that period include the play Ivanov (1887), stories The Steppe (1888) and A Dreary Story (1889).

His scientific background and his experiences as a country doctor contributed to the realism of his future writing. In 1890, Chekhov went to Sakhalin Island in the Pacific Ocean. He studied the Russian state prisons to write about terrible living conditions there (1893-1894).

Later Chekhov’s works include The Black Monk (1894) and The Peasants (1897). He converted his second long play, The Wooden Demon (1889) into the masterpiece Uncle Vanya (1897). His play The Seagull (1896) was badly received until its successful stage revival in 1899 by Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre.

He moved to Crimea to cure tuberculosis he was suffering from, and it was in Crimea where he wrote his great plays: The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904), for the Moscow Art Theatre.

In 1901, Chekhov married Olga Knipper, an actress who played leading roles in several of his plays that were staged by the famous Moscow Art Theatre. Anton Chekhov died of tuberculosis in Badenweiler, Germany in 1904.

Chekhov had an immediate and direct impact on such Western writers as George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, and Sherwood Anderson. His influence on the modern short story and the modern play was immense. Indirectly, most major authors of short stories in the twentieth century, including Katherine Anne Porter, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Bernard Malamud, and Raymond Carver, are in his debt.

Chekhov's plays, which take a tragicomic view of the regular provincial life and the leisure time of the Russian gentry, received international acclaim after translation his works into English and other languages. He is still regarded virtually unmatched as the best short-story writer. Most of Chekhov's characters are decent and sensitive. They dream of improving their lives, but most fail being victims of their sense of helplessness and uselessness.