A Chekhov Circus

A guide to the short stories of Anton Chekhov

Category: Story Length

  • No. 13 – Betrothed

    This was Chekhov’s final story, published about a year before he died. Death hovers over the story: One of the characters is in poor health and ultimately dies of tuberculosis, the disease that felled Chekhov himself. The story: Nadya is engaged to be married to a well-off local man, but as the wedding day approaches,…

  • No. 12 – Peasant Wives

    Of the hundreds of Chekhov stories I have read, this is the one I have thought back on most often, so astounding are the characterizations, so complete the world created by the writer, and so cruel the lives he describes. The story is complicated, considering how brief it is. The opening pages are presented almost…

  • No. 10 – The Schoolmistress

    This is a beautiful, concise tale of a lonely and loveless woman, a teacher in a rural school. Her work is largely unappreciated, if not completely ignored, by the local government and population. On a regular basis she must travel to town to collect her pay, and on one of these trips she meets a…

  • No. 52 – Vanka

    This is a frightful tale of suffering. Vanka, a child of nine, has been left alone on Christmas Eve by the shoemaker to whom he is apprenticed. For once left alone, Vanka gets some paper and ink and composes a letter to his only living relative, his grandfather, begging him to rescue him. Vanka describes…

  • No. 11 – Enemies

    “Enemies” begins, like half-a-dozen other Chekhov stories, with a doctor being summoned to attend to a sick patient. In this case, though, the doctor, Kirilin, has just suffered a devastating loss: The death of his son, at age six, of diphtheria. In a miasma of grief, the doctor is visited by a stranger, Abogin, from…

  • No. 9 – The Bishop

    This beautiful, brief portrait is one of Chekhov’s best stories. Bishop Pyotr is someone who has “risen above his station,” transcending his modest roots. He is a good man, caring, modest, and cautious.  There is not much in the way of plot. His mother comes to visit him and he is filled with joy; he…

  • No. 8 – Frost

    “Frost” is a delicate portrait of a small town winter party.  The title refers to bitter cold weather the town experiences on the day of the party: “28 degrees of frost.” (Which to an American reader translates, I think, to 4 degrees fahrenheit.)  Some of the towns’ leaders wonder if the festival should be canceled;…

  • No. 42 – The Cook’s Wedding

    If you don’t happen to be a Chekhov completist and you aren’t reading every single volume of Constance Garnett’s 13-volume translation of Chekhov’s stories, let me explain that the story “The Cook’s Wedding” is the first story of volume 12, in which every story is about children or animals. If reading roughly two dozen stories…

  • No. 44 – A Living Chattel

    This is the earliest story included in the 13 volumes of tales that Constance Garnett translated. It’s the only story out of the hundreds in the collection that was published in 1882, when Chekhov was grinding away at medical school and just beginning to publish his work in a few journals, most of them newish…

  • No. 43 – The Two Volodyas

    A portrait of an impulsive young woman, Sofya Lvovna, who has married a dashing playboy many years older than her. The two Volodyas of the title are Vladimir Nikititch, otherwise known as Colonel Yagitch, Sofya’s 50-something husband, and Vladimir Mihalovitch, her childhood friend and former/lingering crush. (Volodya is a nickname for Vladimir.) Having married Colonel…