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ANTON CHEKHOV
1860—1904
Son of a serf, Chekhov became a physician and author of a handful of classic plays and of hundreds of stories which changed the course of both genres. His first published work (1880) was written, it was said, to earn enough money to buy his mother a pie for her birthday. His first story collection, "The Tales of Melpomene", was published in 1884, the year he completed his medical studies and went into practice in Moscow; the lung disease from which he was increasingly to suffer had already appeared the year before. The newly founded Moscow Art Company assured his success as a dramatist when it performed "The Sea Gull" in 1898 (a play that had failed two years earlier), "Uncle Vanya" the next year, "Three Sisters" in 1901, and "The Cherry Orchard" in 1904, the year of his death at a German health resort. Around the turn of the century his collected works appeared in ten volumes. He was diffident about the immense success of his works, thinking they would scarcely outlive him, and despite that success he never forgot his own early poverty and struggle for education—and the plight of those who had not been able to escape such conditions.
source:The NORTON Introduction to Literature, 5th Ed.
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