By the end of 1893 he was comfortably supporting his family.

In February 1892, Chekhov bought a 675-acre property outside Moscow, called Melikhovo, and settled there with his family. After the publication of another collection of short stories, Children, in March 1889, Chekhov decided that he could now support his family by his writing alone. The events of this period inspired “A Dreary Story” (1889), in which a dying old man recalls what he considers his meaningless life. He gave up writing for humorous magazines in favor of serious fiction and drama in an attempt, as he said in a letter, to “represent life as it is”.Ĭhekhov spent the summer of 1888 in Ukraine and Yalta. Chekhov’s first play, Ivanov, was performed in Moscow in November 1887. In August appeared In the Twilight, a collection of short stories. In February 1887 he was elected a member of the Literary Fund, an honor given only to outstanding authors. He began practicing medicine less and writing more. The book was successful and Chekhov was recognized as a new talent. Chekhov’s early stories were full of wit and enthusiasm and showed his promise as a writer.Ĭhekhov’s first book published by someone else, Motley Stories, came out in 1886 under his real name. His first book was Tales of Melpomene, a collection of six humorous pieces published with his own money in mid-1884. In the fall of 1881, Alarm Clock accepted stories and his and his older brothers’ work was published in a new humor magazine, Spectator.

His first story was published in March 1880 by a magazine called Dragonfly, which later that year published nine of his stories, most of them signed as “Antosha Chekhonte”. In an attempt to increase his income in Moscow, Chekhov wrote for the humor magazines he liked. He soon took his father’s place as head of the family, a responsibility he carried for the rest of his life.Īfter graduating in 1884, he began working at the hospital in Chikino, Russia, but in December of that year he began coughing up blood, the first symptom of the tuberculosis that eventually caused his death. Chekhov immediately entered the medical faculty of Moscow University. In August 1879 he joined his parents in Moscow, where his father was a laborer and his mother was a part-time seamstress. Chekhov, then sixteen years old, stayed behind to finish his studies. In 1876, his father’s business failed and the family moved to Moscow, Russia, to start over. The young Chekhov and his siblings worked in the family store and studied at the local school. He was the third of six children of Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, a grocery store owner.Ĭhekhov’s grandfather was a serf who bought his family’s freedom in 1841. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in Taganrog, southern Russia, on the Sea of Azov, on January 17, 1860.

Anton chekhov short stories