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Children

• Kashtanka (1995)
  Separated from her master while out on a walk, Kashtanka the dog is adopted by a circus clown. Ages 9-12.

Plays

• On the Harmfulness of Tobacco (1886)
  See Nine Plays of Chekov

• Ivanov (1887)
  Ivanov, a driving force in local government and a visionary landowner, feels burnt out at thirty-five. Once the pioneer of scientific farming methods and of education for peasants, he now drowns in bureaucracy and debt, his large estate neglected. While his wife is dying, Sacha, a young, educated woman, falls in love with Ivanov and determines to save him.

• The Bear (1888)
  See Anton Chekhov Plays and The Bear: An Opera Vocal Score 

• Tatyana Repina (1888)
  The sensational onstage suicide of Russian actress and opera singer Kadmina in 1881 led Alexei Suvorin to memorialize her in his 1888 four-act play Tatyana Repina. One year later, his friend Anton Chekhov, himself fascinated by Kadmina, sent Suvorin a one-act play, which was in fact a fifth act continuation of Tatyana Repina, with instructions to show it to no one. When the play was finally made public years later by Chekhov's brother Mikhail, it presented a mystery: Was it, as the brother claimed, a parody? Or was the brother simply distancing himself from a then controversial Suvorin? Russian historian and linguist John Racin examines the enormous documentary record to make the case that Chekhov's one-act was written as an earnest artistic complement to Suvorin's. Racin's convictions led him to retranslate both Tatyana Repinas, presented here with additional relevant texts.

• The Swan Song (1888)

• The Proposal (1889)

• The Wedding (1889)
  See also Anton Chekhov Plays

• The Wood Demon (1889)
  The Wood Demon is a young man's play, bursting with vitality, energy, and hope. Chekhov has not yet drawn the sky close around his characters: they are able to continue on, undaunted, in the face of sorrow and disappointment. In its intermingling of tears and laughter, The Wood Demon may be one of the most astonishingly Chekhovian of all Chekhov's plays..  Used as material for Uncle Vanya.

• The Reluctant Tragic Hero (1890)
  See 7 Short Farces by Anton Chekhov

• The Duel (1891)
  First published in 1891, this morality tale pits a scientist, a government worker, his mistress, a deacon, and a physician against one another in a verbal battle of wits and ethics that explodes into a violent contest: the duel. When Laevsky, a lazy youth who works for the government, tires of his dependent mistress, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, Von Koren, the scientist, delivers a scathing critique of Loevsky's egotism, forcing the young man to examine his soul. The Duel is a tale of human weakness, the possibility of forgiveness, and a man's ultimate ability to change his ways. It is classic Chekhov, revealing the multifaceted essence of human nature.

• The Anniversary (1892)

• The Seagull (1896)
  The Seagull, a spectacular failure on its first appearance, was the play that, on its second, established Anton Chekhov as an important and revolutionary dramatist. Here, amid the weariness of life in the country, the famous actress Arkadina presides over a household riven with desperate love, with dreams of success and dread of failure. It is her son, Konstantin, who one day shoots a seagull; it is the novelist Trigorin who will one day write the story of the seagull so casually killed; but it is Nina, the seagull herself, whose life to come will rewrite the story.
  Movie (1968): Sidney Lumet, director, with James Mason, Simone Signoret, and Vanessa Redgrave  DVD  VHS

• Uncle Vanya (1897)
  A country house on a terrace. In front of it a garden. In an avenue of trees, under an old poplar, stands a table set for tea, with a samovar, etc. Some benches and chairs stand near the table. On one of them is lying a guitar. A hammock is swung near the table. It is three o'clock in the afternoon of a cloudy day. MARINA, a quiet, grey-haired, little old woman, is sitting at the table knitting a stocking.

• The Three Sisters (1900)
  This landmark play probes the lives and dreams of Olga, Masha and Irina, former Muscovites now living in a provincial town from which they long to escape. Their hopes for a life more suited to their cultivated tastes and sensibilities provide a touching counterpoint to the relentless flow of compromising events in the real world.
  Movie (1965), Shelley Winters, Director, with Geraldine Page and Paul Bogart   VHS
  Movie (1970), Laurence Olivier, director, with Derek Jacobi, Jeanne Watts, Joan Plowright, Laurence Olivier, and Louise Purnell  DVD VHS

• The Cherry Orchard (1904)
  Classic of world drama concerns the passing of the old semifeudal order in turn-of-the-century Russia, symbolized in the sale of the cherry orchard owned by Madame Ranevskaya. The work also showcases the great Russian writer's rich sensitivities as an observer of human nature.

• Chekhov: The Major Plays

• Chekhov for the Stage: The Seagull/ Uncle Vanya/ The Three Sisters/

• Chekhov's Early Plays

• Five Comic One-Act Plays

• Five Plays: Ivanov/ The Seagull/ Uncle Vanya/ Three Sisters/ The Cherry Orchard

• Monologues from Chekhov

• Plays: Ivanov/ The Seagull/ Uncle Vanya/ Three Sisters/ The Cherry Orchard/ The Bear/ The Proposal/ A Jubilee

• The Plays of Anton Chekhov

• The Seagull/ Uncle Vanya/ Three Sisters/ The Cherry Orchard

• Twelve Plays

• Chekhov's Major Plays (1996)
  his book includes translations of Chekhov's five major plays, "Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters," (translated by Karl Kramer) and "The Cherry Orchard" (translated by Karl Kramer and Margaret Booker). The translations strive for accuracy and performability on the stage. The introduction treats two idiosyncratic features of Chekhov's text: the ways he employs the stage direction, "through tears," and his extensive use of ellipses for a variety of purposes. The notes and commentary seek to elucidate various references whose meaning may not be readily apparent to an English-speaking reader today. The explanatory and interpretative materials also provide a wealth of information on variants of specific lines; they give information on a number of issues where the early productions of the plays, under Konstantin Stanislavsky's direction, underwent rather perverse interpretation of Chekhov's material. Finally, the notes offer insights into particular implications of various lines in the plays.

• The Plays of Anton Chekhov (1998), Paul Schmidt, translator

• Plays (1997)
  The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard are included in this collection. With accented text and notes, for advanced students. In Russian.

• The Shooting Party (1884)
  The Shooting Party wraps a story of concealed love and fatal jealousy into a classic murder mystery. When a young woman dies during a shooting party at the country estate of a dissolute count, a magistrate is called to investigate. But suspicion descends upon virtually everyone, for, as we soon learn, the victim was at the center of a tangled web of relationships—with her elderly husband, with the lecherous count, and with the magistrate himself. One of Anton Chekhov’s earliest experiments in fiction, this short, riveting novel prefigures the mature style he would develop in his magnificent stories and plays.

• Step (1888)
  See The Steppe -- Chekhov's first short story to be published in a serious Russian literary journal.

• The Grasshopper (1892)

• The Island A Journey to Sakhalin (1893)

• The Black Monk (1895)

• My Life (1894)
  This masterful tale of a young man's struggle to find a satisfying life in a stagnant, provincial town chronicles the young Misail's journey into manhood as he tries to fight the morally and mentally deadening effects of his surroundings. With its sensitivity to emotional nuance, vivid atmospheric detail, and brilliant psychological observations, this novella provides a beautiful example of Chekhov's masterful style.

• The House with the Mezzanine: And Other Stories, (1896)

• The Peasants (1897)
  See Peasants and Other Stories

• Ward Number Six(1897)

• Gooseberries (1898)
  See Classics Short Stories Anton Chekhov

• Man in a Case (1898)
  See Chekhov: Three Stories

• The Darling and Other Stories (1899)

• Lady With a Lapdog (1899)

• The Bishop (1902)

• The Fiancee (1903)

• Tales (1916 - 1922)
  See Tales of Chekhov

• That Worthless Fellow Platonov (1923)

• Seven Short Novels (1963)

• Early Short Stories, 1883-1888 (1982)

• The Kiss and Other Stories (1982)

• The Duel and Other Stories (1984)

• The Party and Other Stories (1985)

• The Chekhov Omnibus (1986)

• The Fiancee and Other Stories (1986)

• The Princess and Other Stories (1990)
  A practicing doctor, Chekhov was an acute observer of Russian society's moral, as well as physical sickness. Joining The Russian Master, Ward Number Six, and A Woman's Kingdom in the World's Classics series, this collection, including `The Party', `After the Theatre', and `A Case History', again poses his recurrent literary quandary of whether to moralize, hoping to reform these ailments, or simply to entertain. The solution is to be found in the stories themselves, which, like his plays, offer no easy answers, but pinpoint the anguish, tedium, or downright evil of his characters with an irony that makes them both poignant and truthful.

• Forty Stories (1991)

• Longer Stories from the Last Decade (1993)

• Stories of Women (1994)

• Stories of Men (1997)

• Motley Tales and a Play (1998)
  This anthology provides an unusual selection of stories and a play from among the author's own favorites, including "The Student" and "The Three Sisters." Drawing from such rare artifacts as the Moscow Art Theatre's album from its production of "The Three Sisters" (with Chekhov's wife in the role of Masha) and Vladimir Nabokov's handwritten lecture notes on Chekhov's oeuvre, this Collector's Edition of most-loved works offers readers the chance to become acquainted with Chekhov's tender humor through the author's own choices from among his poignant and whimsical tales.

• Later Short Stories, 1888-1903 (1999)

• The Comic Stories (1999)
  Unpretentious, lively, and inventive, these comic stories have long been affectionately regarded in Russia, but published in the West, overawed by the prevailing image of Chekhov as a melancholy genius, have resisted the down-to-earth humorist.

• The Undiscovered Chekhov: Forty-Three New Stories (1999)


In his twenties, Anton Chekhov was a doctor churning out witty, unconventional stories on the side. This early work was unknown in English until Peter Constantine discovered Chekhov's byline in old Russian magazines at the New York Public Library. This collection, called "a delicious volume" by the London Times, has a freshness and modernist verve that will surprise those familiar with Chekhov's more controlled later work.

• On the Sea and Other Stories (2000), Peter Sekirin, ed.

• The Russian Master and Other Stories (2000)

• The Fiddles of Autumn - On The Highway (1952)

• The Unknown Chekhov: Stories and Other Writings Hitherto Untranslated (1954)

• The Portable Chekhov (1955)

• The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov (1955)
  See Letters of Anton Chekhov  

• Letters of Anton Chekhov (1973)
  See Letters of Anton Chekhov

• Anton Chekhov's Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary (1975)

• Anton Chekov's Short Stories (1979)

• The Oxford Chekhov (1980)
  See The Oxford Chekhov

• Anton Checkhov: A Life in Letters (1994)

• Dear Writer, Dear Actress: The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper (1996)

• A Chekhov Concert: Duets and Arias from the Plays of Anton Chekhov (2000), Conceived and composed by Jordan Charney and Sharon Gans

• Letters on the Short Story, The Drama, and Other Literary Topics (1924)

• The Oxford Chekhov (1968)

See also: