Stories

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is known worldwide as a talented playwright, his staged plays invariably fill theaters in various countries around the world. However, his writing career began with feuilletons and short stories. At that time, Chekhov, the grandson of a serf and a future classic of world literature, became known to the reading public as Antosha Chekhonte. He started composing while still in the Taganrog Gymnasium, which he graduated from in 1879. In the same year, Chekhov left his native Taganrog and became a student at the medical faculty of Moscow University. At the end of that same year, 1879, Chekhov made his literary debut. In the following years, the number of his small literary masterpieces grew to several hundreds. According to the writer himself, at that time he sometimes wrote a story a day. And although an entire era has passed in which the heroes of young Chekhov live and act, it is unlikely that in our days there will be a person whom these cheerful miniatures leave indifferent. They invariably evoke a smile.

Illustrations for the texts of the collection were created by Kukryniksy. Under this pseudonym, members of the Academy of Arts of the USSR worked, the народные художники Mikhail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov (1903–1991), Porfiry Nikitich Krylov (1902–1990) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov (1903–2000).