Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian playwright
and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest
writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright
produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high
esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August
Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three
seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theater.
Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his
literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and
literature is my mistress."Chekhov renounced the theatre after the
disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was
revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art
Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle
Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three
Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present
a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because
in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood"
and a "submerged life in the text."Chekhov had at first written
stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew,
he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of
the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties
this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to
ask questions, not to answer them. Anton Chekhov was the
author of hundreds of short stories and several plays and is
regarded by many as both the greatest Russian storyteller and the
father of modern drama.
Robert Payne (1911–1983) was a writer known for his
novels, poems, and articles. Payne specialized in biography and
history. After working and studying abroad Asia, he moved to the
United States, where he became a professor of English literature.
He spent the rest of his life in New York. A prolific biographic,
Payne wrote some of the essential texts on Hitler, Stalin, Marx,
Mao Zedong, Lenin, and Gandhi.
I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is
accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a
great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking
along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean
-- wherever my imagination ranges."
-- Anton Chekhov
If any one writer can be said to have invented the modem short
story, it is Anton Chekhov. It is not just that Chekhov
democratized this art form; more than that, he changed the thrust
of short fiction from relating to revealing.
And what marvelous and unbearable things are revealed in these
Forty Stories. The abashed happiness of a woman in the presence of
the husband who abandoned her years before. The obsequious terror
of the official who accidentally sneezes on a general. The poignant
astonishment of an aging Don Juan overtaken by love. Spanning the
entirety of Chekhov's career and including such masterpieces as
"Surgery," "The Huntsman," "Anyuta," "Sleepy-head," "The Lady With
the Pet Dog," and "The Bishop," this collection manages to be
amusing, dazzling, and supremely moving -- often within a single
page.
Vintage Classic are-quality paperback editions of the world's
greatest written works. They are durably bound and are printed
exclusively on acid-free paper.
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