From his teenage years in provincial Russia to his premature death in 1904, Anton Chekhov wrote thousands of letters to a wide range of correspondents. This fascinating new selection tells Chekhov's story as a man and a writer through affectionate bulleti
Raymond Carver called Anton Chekhov "the greatest short story writer who has ever lived." This unequivocal verdict on Chekhov's genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, John Cheever and Tobias Wolf.
THE BLEAK SIBERIAN WILDERNESS, 1890The ship had run aground. But lucky chance the Herald was also stranded -- with a band on board, so there was an excellent party. This was a high point of Chekhov's great journey through Russia's wilderness. He was to sh
A hundred years ago in November 1910 Count Leo Tolstoy died on a remote Russian railway station, attended by the world's media, taken ill as he was finally attempting to escape his decadent (as he saw it), aristocratic family life.Tolstoy has been univers