Anton Chekhov was a prolific Russian author and playwright who explored themes such as poverty, tragedy, and everyday life. He had a unique perspective due to his training as a physician and wrote hundreds of short stories while supporting himself through medical school. Chekhov’s plays, including Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard, reflected major changes in Russian society and are now produced worldwide. He also produced haunting depictions of life in late 19th century Russia through his short stories and cartoons.
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was an extraordinarily prolific Russian author and playwright. Chekhov explored many themes in his work, including poverty, tragedy, petty bureaucracy, and the everyday life of Russian serfs and peasants. Relatively unknown outside his native Russia until after World War I, Anton Chekhov’s plays are now produced worldwide by a diverse range of theater companies.
Anton Chekhov was born in rural Russia to a grocer and tailor’s assistant. He bitterly resented the long, heavy hours he worked at his father’s grocery store as a child, drawing on those experiences to inform some of his work about him. Anton Chekhov had a hard time at school due to his heavy work schedule. When he was 14, his father went bankrupt and moved the family to Moscow, while Anton Chekhov decided to stay in his hometown, taking on tutoring jobs to support himself.
At the age of 19, Anton Chekhov moved to Moscow and enrolled in medical school, graduating in 1884 and establishing a small practice. While in medical school, Chekhov supported himself and his family by writing short comic stories for publication in a number of Moscow periodicals. Anton Chekhov had a knack for quickly producing entertaining stories for simple audiences, and he churned out hundreds during his medical school years. These stories soon began to take off in a major fashion, providing most of Chekhov’s financial support and the prospect of a career in writing.
Because of his training as a physician, Anton Chekhov brought a unique perspective to his work. Many of his characters are dispassionate observers, and he has sometimes been criticized for the lack of sharp social commentary in his work. Much of Chekhov’s writing is quite tragic, but painted in simple and clear terms, allowing the reader or viewer to draw their own conclusions about the material presented.
In 1888, Anton Chekhov won a Pushkin Prize for his fiction. However, shortly thereafter, his play The Wood Demon was an embarrassing failure and he withdrew from the literary world for some time. In 1892, after the successful publication of several collections of his short stories and further recognition in the literary community, Chekhov retired from medical practice and began living as a full-time writer.
Chekhov’s plays were staged in ever larger and more successful productions, as he continued to write short stories and novels, although most critics agree that he reached his literary zenith with Uncle Vanya in 1900, following from Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904). The plays reflected major changes in Russian society as well as a more mature and thoughtful Chekhov. They were meant to be dark comedies, although many theaters produce them as tragedies, a reflection of the miserable and meaningless lives of many of the characters.
Although Anton Chekhov is best remembered for the three major works he wrote at the end of his life, he also produced a huge body of short stories and cartoons, many of which are rather haunting depictions of life in Russia in the late 19th century. His stories reflect the daily occurrence of small tragedies in the lives of the poor and how they were dealt with.
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