A Chekhov Circus

A guide to the short stories of Anton Chekhov

Category: Story publication date

  • No. 160 – Minds in Ferment

    A small town erupts in a panic for no reason.

  • No. 161 – The Wife

    A retired engineer in a loveless marriage decides to raise money to help the local peasantry during a famine.

  • No. 162 – Happiness

    Two shepherds and a bailiff trade stories about supposed treasures buried in the woods.

  • No. 22 – The Requiem

    This is an extremely economical tale of a man who is so deeply troubled that his daughter became an actress that, even after her death, he cannot stop himself from referring to her as a “harlot.” The man, a simple shopkeeper named Andrey Andreyitch, submits a note to his priest, asking that his daughter be…

  • No. 24 – Anna on the Neck

    This is a sort of fable, although one without a simple moral. Anna, the daughter of a impoverished drunkard, is married off to a wealthy, much older man, an insufferable, repulsive fellow who, despite his wealth, is stingy with his beautiful young wife. The peculiar title of the story refers to an honor conferred on…

  • No. 27 – The Letter

    Of Chekhov’s portraits of the priesthood (there are not that many), this one might be the most “human,” for it shows different levels of faith, doubt, and seriousness within the church. The story features three men of the cloth, each at a different tier in the hierarchy. At the high end is the district clerical…

  • No. 37 – (tie) Polinka/Anyuta

    These two brief sketches focus on wretched love affairs. In the Constance Garnett translations of Chekhov, they appear side-by-side, and as a reader you can’t help but see them as a single piece of fiction, even though they stand completely separate, and were written months apart. Of the two, “Anyuta” is the harsher, more painful…

  • No. 31 – Difficult People

    Chekhov’s father was a petty tyrant who immiserated his wife and children, but only rarely did Chekhov portray cruel, overbearing fathers in his fiction. “Difficult People,” like “The Head of the Family,” is one of those rare cases. The title, “Difficult People,” would probably better be, “A Difficult Person.” It is a portrait of a…

  • No. 131 – Martyrs

    A woman makes the most of a sick day, exhausting her husband in the process.

  • No. 132 – The First-Class Passenger

    Chatting up a stranger on a train, an engineer laments the fact that for all his accomplishments, he is not as well known as actors, writers and the like.