Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (1860–1904)

A photograph taken in 1900 of the two Russian writers Anton Chekhov (on the left) and Maxim Gorky. In his early writing career, Gorky became friends with Chekhov, whose frail health as a result of contracting tuberculosis in 1892 caused him to move to the warmer climate of the Crimea. There Chekhov encouraged Gorky to write his most famous play, The Lower Depths(1902).

Russian dramatist and writer of short stories. His plays concentrate on the creation of atmosphere and delineation of internal development, rather than external action. His first play, Ivanov (1887), was a failure, as was The Seagull (1896) until revived by Stanislavsky in 1898 at the Moscow Art Theatre, for which Chekhov went on to write his finest plays: Uncle Vanya (1897), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904).

Chekhov was born in Taganrog, southern Russia. He qualified as a doctor in 1884, but devoted himself to writing short stories rather than practising medicine. The collection Particoloured Stories (1886) consolidated his reputation and gave him leisure to develop his style, as seen in My Life (1895), The Lady with the Dog (1898), and In the Ravine (1900).