Chekhov's Stories Illustrations by Kukryniksy

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is known worldwide as a talented playwright, his staged plays invariably fill theaters in various countries around the globe. 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 writing 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 Faculty of Medicine at Moscow University. At the end of that same 1879, Chekhov made his literary debut. In the following years, the number of his small literary masterpieces grew to several hundred. According to the writer himself, during that time he sometimes wrote a story a day. And although a whole era has passed in which the heroes of young Chekhov live and act, it is unlikely that there exists a person today who remains indifferent to these cheerful miniatures. They invariably evoke a smile.The illustrations for the texts of the collection were created by Kukryniksy. Under this pseudonym worked members of the USSR Academy of Arts, people's artists Mikhail Vasilyevich Kupriyanov (1903–1991), Porfiry Nikitich Krylov (1902–1990) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov (1903–2000).