Anton Chekhov Books In Order

Novels

  1. The Shooting Party (1884)

Collections

  1. The Exclamation Mark (1886)
  2. The Darling and Other Stories (1899)
  3. The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories (1917)
  4. The Beggar (1949)
  5. The Brute (1958)
  6. Selected Stories (1960)
  7. Lady with Lapdog (1964)
  8. Ward No. 6 (1965)
  9. Late-blooming Flowers (1984)
  10. Collected Works (1987)
  11. Five Great Short Stories (1990)
  12. Motley Tales and a Play (1998)
  13. The Essential Tales of Chekhov (1999)
  14. About Love (2004)
  15. The Complete Short Novels (2004)
  16. Short Stories by Anton Chekhov (2008)
  17. A Night in the Cemetery (2008)
  18. The Prank (2015)
  19. Stories for Our Time (2018)
  20. Chekhov: Stories for Our Time (2018)
  21. In the Ravine & Other Stories (2019)
  22. The Duel and Other Stories (2020)
  23. Fifty-Two Stories (2020)
  24. The Lady with the Dog and Other Love Stories (2021)
  25. Small Fry and Other Stories (2022)

Plays

  1. Ivanov (1887)
  2. The Bear (1888)
  3. The Proposal (1889)
  4. The Wedding (1889)
  5. On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco (1889)
  6. The Anniversary (1891)
  7. The Seagull (1897)
  8. Uncle Vanya (1899)
  9. The Three Sisters (1901)
  10. The Cherry Orchard (1904)
  11. Platonov (1923)
  12. On the High Road (1935)
  13. Plays By Anton Chekhov (1935)
  14. The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, The Seagull and Uncle Vanya (2018)

Novellas

  1. Kashtanka (1887)
  2. The Duel (1891)
  3. The Story of a Nobody (1893)
  4. The Black Monk (1894)
  5. Three Years (1895)
  6. The House with the Mezzanine (1896)
  7. The Darling (1899)
  8. The Lady with the Dog (1899)
  9. Enemies (1932)

Non fiction

  1. Sakhalin Island (1893)
  2. Letters of Anton Chekhov (1973)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

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Anton Chekhov Books Overview

The Shooting Party

The Shooting Party wraps a story of concealed love and fatal jealousy into a classic murder mystery. When a young woman dies during a shooting party at the country estate of a dissolute count, a magistrate is called to investigate. But suspicion descends upon virtually everyone, for, as we soon learn, the victim was at the center of a tangled web of relationships with her elderly husband, with the lecherous count, and with the magistrate himself. One of Anton Chekhov’s earliest experiments in fiction, this short, riveting novel prefigures the mature style he would develop in his magnificent stories and plays.

The Exclamation Mark

A civil servant stands accused of not understanding the rules of punctuation. He begins to go through the correct use of commas and semicolons before arriving at The Exclamation Mark, which, he realizes, in 40 years of writing, he has never used. From here he develops a bizarre and paranoid fantasy in which everyday objects transform into malevolent exclamation marks. Written when Chekhov was on the verge of becoming a literary celebrity, this is an enlightening new selection that reveals the author’s often neglected comic talents.

The Darling and Other Stories

Kukin, who was the manager of an open air theater called the Tivoli, and who lived in the lodge, was standing in the middle of the garden looking at the sky. ‘Again!’ he observed despairingly. ‘It’s going to rain again! Rain every day, as though to spite me. I might as well hang myself! It’s ruin! Fearful losses every day.’ He flung up his hands, and went on, addressing Olenka: ‘There! that’s the life we lead, Olga Semyonovna. It’s enough to make one cry. One works and does one’s utmost, one wears oneself out, getting no sleep at night, and racks one’s brain what to do for the best. And then what happens? To begin with, one’s public is ignorant, boorish. I give them the very best operetta, a dainty masque, first rate music hall artists. But do you suppose that’s what they want! They don’t understand anything of that sort. They want a clown; what they ask for is vulgarity. And then look at the weather!’ This volume also includes ‘Ariadne,’ ‘Polinka,’ ‘Anyuta,’ ‘The Two Volodyas,’ ‘The Trousseau,’ ‘The Helpmate,’ ‘Talent,’ ‘An Artist’s Story,’ and ‘Three Years.’

The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 1860 1904 was a Russian short story writer and a playwright. His playwriting career produced four classics, while his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, ‘ he once said, ‘and literature is my mistress’. Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim by Constantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Uncle Vanya and premiered Chekhov’s last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a special challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a ‘theatre of mood’ and a ‘submerged life in the text’. His originality consists in an early use of the stream of consciousness technique combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure.

The Brute

Called the greatest of short story writer, Anton Chekhov changed the genre itself with his spare, impressionistic depictions of Russian life and the human condition. Now, thirty of his best tales from the major periods of his creative life are available in this outstanding one volume edition. Included are Chekhov’s characteristically brief, evocative early pieces such as ‘The Huntsman’ from 1885, which brilliantly conveys the complex texture of two lives during a meeting on a summer’s day. Four years later, Chekhov produced the tour de force ‘A Boring Story’ 1889, the penetrating and caustic self analysis of a dying professor of medicine. Dark irony, social commentary, and symbolism mark the stories that follow, particularly ‘Ward No. 6’ 1892, where the tables turn on the director of a mental hospital and make him an inmate. Here, too, is one of Chekhov’s best known stories. ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ 1899, a look at illicit love, as well as his own favorite among his stories, ‘The Student,’ a moving piece about the importance of religious tradition. Atmospheric, compassionate, and uncannily wise, Chekhov’s short fiction possesses the transcendent power of art to awe and change the reader. This monumental edition, expertly translated, is especially faithful to the meaning of Chekhov’s prose and the unique rhythms of his writing, giving readers an authentic sense of his style and, in doing so, a true understanding of his greatness.

Selected Stories

With an Introduction and Notes by Joe Andrew, Professor of Russian Literature, Keele University Anton Chekhov is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of short stories. He constructs stories where action and drama are implied rather than described openly, and which leave much to the reader’s imagination. This collection contains some of the most important of his earliest and shortest comic sketches, as well as examples of his great, mature works. Throughout, the doctor turned writer displays compassion for human suffering and misfortune, but is always able to see the comical, even farcical aspects of the human condition.

Ward No. 6

The six stories ‘Ward Six’, ‘The Duel’, ‘A Dull Story’, ‘My Life’, ‘The Name Day Party’, and ‘In the Ravine’ here presented in memorable translations represent Chekhov’s narrative genius at the full range and power of its maturity. As masterfully constructed as his earlier stories, but with far greater richness and dimension, they deal with human beings suffering the pain of existence, their lives illumined by the author’s rigorous objectivity. The novella ‘Ward Six’, with its hauntingly symbolic depiction of the world of an insane asylum; ‘The Duel’, with its theme of moral degradation, its hint of regeneration; and ‘A Dull Story’, with its relentless depiction of a culture that corrupts and alienates; these and others present a vivid portrait of a blighted society, seen through the eyes of a writer whose understanding of ‘human foolishness’ is without equal. Chekhov demands much of his readers, but gives much in return: the reader is challenged to collaborate in the experience of the story, to interpret it in the way an actor interprets the text of a play, or a musician a score. A good ‘performance’ by the reader will yield a very great reward. As these stories grew in length they grew in complexity. They sometimes appear to embrace the entire community of Russia itself.

Five Great Short Stories

Incisive, masterfully written tales set in Tsarist Russian milieux reveal noted author’s skills in character, nuance, and setting development. Includes ‘The Black Monk’ 1894, ‘The House with the Mezzanine’ 1896, ‘The Peasants’ 1897, ‘Gooseberries’ 1898, and ‘The Lady with the Toy Dog’ 1899.

Motley Tales and a Play

This anthology provides an unusual selection of stories and a play from among the author’s own favorites, including ‘The Student’ and ‘The Three Sisters.’ Drawing from such rare artifacts as the Moscow Art Theatre’s album from its production of ‘The Three Sisters’ with Chekhov’s wife in the role of Masha and Vladimir Nabokov’s handwritten lecture notes on Chekhov’s oeuvre, this Collector’s Edition of most loved works offers readers the chance to become acquainted with Chekhov’s tender humor through the author’s own choices from among his poignant and whimsical tales.

The Essential Tales of Chekhov

In this collection of 20 short stories, the editor Richard Ford has selected his personal favourites of Chekhov’s work. Includes are ‘The Kiss’, ‘The Darling’, as well as lesser known tales such as ‘A Blunder’, ‘Hush’ and ‘Champagne’.

About Love

Raymond Carver called Anton Chekhov ‘the greatest short story writer who has ever lived.’ This unequivocal verdict on Chekhov’s genius has been echoed many times by writers as diverse as Katherine Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, John Cheever and Tobias Wolf. While his popularity as a playwright has sometimes overshadowed his achievements in prose, the importance of Chekhov’s stories is now recognized by readers as well as by fellow authors. Their themes alienation, the absurdity and tragedy of human existence have as much relevance today as when they were written, and these superb new translations capture their modernist spirit. Elusive and subtle, spare and unadorned, the stories in this selection are among Chekhov’s most poignant and lyrical. The book includes well known pieces such as ‘The Lady with the Little Dog,’ as well as less familiar work like ‘Gusev,’ inspired by Chekhov’s travels in the Far East, and ‘Rothschild’s Violin,’ a haunting and darkly humorous tale about death and loss. The stories are arranged chronologically to show the evolution of Chekhov’s art.

The Complete Short Novels

Book Jacket Status: JacketedAanton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels here brought together in one volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the award winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The Steppe the most lyrical of the five is an account of a nine year old boy’s frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia. The Duel sets two decadent figures a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility on a collision course that ends in a series of surprising reversals. In The Story of an Unknown Man, a political radical spying on an important official by serving as valet to his son gradually discovers that his own terminal illness has changed his long held priorities in startling ways. Three Years recounts a complex series of ironies in the personal life of a rich but passive Moscow merchant. In My Life, a man renounces wealth and social position for a life of manual labor. The resulting conflict between the moral simplicity of his ideals and the complex realities of human nature culminates in a brief apocalyptic vision that is unique in Chekhov s work. From the Hardcover edition.

A Night in the Cemetery

The English language debut of Anton Chekhov’s first collection of mystery and suspense tales. Considered one of the greatest dramatists of all time, Anton Chekhov actually began his literary career as a crime and mystery writer. Scattered throughout periodicals and literary journals from 1880 1890, Peter Sekirin brings together these psychological suspense stories in a premier collection that provides a fresh look into Chekhov’s literary heritage and his formative years as a writer. In stories like ‘A Night in the Cemetery, Night of Horror,’ and ‘Murder,’ not only will Chekhov’s dark humor and twisted crimes satisfy even the most hardboiled of mystery fans, readers will again appreciate the penetrating, absurdist insight into the human condition that only Chekhov can bring. Whether it is the death of a young, amateur playwright at the hands of an editor who hates bad writing, or a drunken civil servant who ends up trapped in a graveyard, these stories overflow with the unforgettable characters and unique sensibility that continue to make Chekhov one of the most fascinating figures in literature.

Ivanov

Anton Chekhov was a master whose daring work revolutionized theater, and this was as true of Ivanov, his first full length play, as of The Cherry Orchard, his last. Building on the success of his acclaimed adaptation of The Seagull, Tom Stoppard returns to Chekhov and the themes of bitter social satire, personal introspection, and the electrifying atmosphere of Russia on the brink of change. In these two new versions, Stoppard brings his crisp and nimble style to two masterpieces of the modern theater. Ivanov is a portrait of a man plagued with self doubt and despair. Considered one of Chekhov’s most elusive characters, he seeks more in life than the selfabsorption and ennui he sees in his contemporaries. Tormented by falling out of love with his dying Jewish wife, Ivanov, on her death, proposes to the young daughter of his neighbor, but, as the wedding party assembles, a final burst of his habitual indecisivness has fatal results.

The Bear

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov January 29 O.S. January 17 1860 July 15 O.S. July 2 1904 was a Russian short story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short story writers in world literature. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practised as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: ‘Medicine is my lawful wife,’ he once said, ‘and literature is my mistress.’ Chekhov had at first written stories only for the money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream of consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. Wikipedia

The Proposal

NATALYA STEPANOVNA. Ours! You can go on proving it for two days on end, you can go and put on fifteen dress jackets, but I tell you they’re ours, ours, ours! I don’t want anything of yours and I don’t want to give up anything of mine. So there!

The Anniversary

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov January 29 O.S. January 17 1860 July 15 O.S. July 2 1904 was a Russian short story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short story writers in world literature. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practised as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: ‘Medicine is my lawful wife,’ he once said, ‘and literature is my mistress.’ Chekhov had at first written stories only for the money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream of consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. Wikipedia

The Seagull

The Seagull is the first of what are generally considered to be the four major plays by the Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. The play was written in 1895 and first produced in 1896. It dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the ingenue Nina, the fading leading lady Irina Arkadina, her son the experimental playwright Konstantin Treplyov, and the famous middlebrow story writer Trigorin.

As with the rest of Chekhov’s full length plays, The Seagull relies upon an ensemble cast of diverse, fully developed characters. In contrast to the melodrama of the mainstream theatre of the 19th century, lurid actions such as Konstantin’s suicide attempts are not shown onstage. Characters tend to speak in ways that skirt around issues rather than addressing them directly, a dramatic practice known as subtext.

The play has an intertextual relationship with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Arkadina and Treplyov quote lines from it before the play within a play in the first act and this device is itself used in Hamlet. There are many allusions to Shakespearean plot details as well. For instance, Treplyov seeks to win his mother back from the usurping older man Trigorin much as Hamlet tries to win Queen Gertrude back from his uncle Claudius.

Uncle Vanya

A masterpiece of Russian drama, now in a student editionAlong with Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya is credited as one of Chekhov’s masterpieces and a significant precursor of modern drama. Set on a country estate in late nineteenth century Russia, Uncle Vanya is in part a study of the enervation of Russian middle class provincial life. The major dynamics between the characters themselves are centred on two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere and a flirtation that brings disaster. Mixing the tragic and the absurd and dealing with a form that allows for ambiguity and contradiction, Uncle Vanya has been deemed ‘the first modernist play’. David Lan’It is the element of might have been in Chekhov’s characters that makes their sense of waste so tragic ? I know of no more moving climax in world drama.’ GuardianDefinitive translation by acclaimed playwright Michael FraynMethuen Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays. Contains the complete text of the play, the volume contains a chronology of the playwright’s life and work; an introduction giving the background to the play; a discussion of various interpretations; and notes on individual words and phrases in the text

The Three Sisters

Chekhov’s 1901 play, Three Sisters is part of the naturalism movement in theatre where plays portrayed the lives of ordinary people in realistic settings. Three Sisters is about the decay of the privileged class in Russia and the search for meaning in the modern world. It describes the lives and aspirations of the Prozorov family. After their cultured upbringing in Moscow the family moves to a small provincial town after the death of their father. The young sisters find this new life stultifying. Their brother is the new head of the household, but disappoints when he spends his time gambling and marries a woman that the sisters despise. Moscow looms over the play as a symbol of both happiness and an intellectual existence, but always remains at an unreachable distance for these sisters who are desperate to return there. More than a century old, Chekhov s play explores a theme that rings true to modern audiences: the strive for meaning, the attainment of hopes and dreams and the disillusionment when hopes are not fulfilled.

The Cherry Orchard

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 1860 1904 was a Russian short story writer and a playwright. His playwriting career produced four classics, while his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, ‘ he once said, ‘and literature is my mistress’. Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896; but the play was revived to acclaim by Constantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Uncle Vanya and premiered Chekhov’s last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a special challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a ‘theatre of mood’ and a ‘submerged life in the text’. His originality consists in an early use of the stream of consciousness technique combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure.

Platonov

Platonov is disillusioned. He is approaching middle age, a country schoolmaster with a failing marriage and a circle of friends who drink to mourn the passing of their idealism. In a world rife with extramarital affairs, attempted suicides, fights, and comic desperation, Platonov is the plausible hero. This bold new adaptation of Chekhov’s first full length play brings a startlingly contemporary sensibility to the 19th century drama while remaining true to the playwright s voice and vision. In Platonov, all the classic Chekhovian elements shine: the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy, the deep insight into human nature, the unforgettable characters grappling with moral uncertainties. The first Canadian version of one of Chekhov s most ambitious works, Platonov is a thrilling switchback ride between farce and tragedy that belongs on every theatre lover s bookshelf.

On the High Road

BORTSOV. You don’t understand me…
. Understand me, you fool, if there’s a drop of brain in your peasant’s wooden head, that it isn’t I who am asking you, but my inside, using the words you understand, that’s what’s asking! My illness is what’s asking! Understand!

Plays By Anton Chekhov

Chekhov was a Russian who wrote short stories and plays. Plays included in this volume are The Three Sisters, The Proposal, The Wedding, The Bear, A Tragedian on Spite of Himself, and The Cherry Orchard, On the High Road, and The Anniversary. The historical content and humor of the era have been accurately translated in this work.

Kashtanka

Based on a new translation and adapted especially for young readers, Kashtanka is an enchanting introduction to the work of one of the world’s foremost authors. Gennady Spirin s award winning illustrations bring new life to this adaptation of Anton Chekhov s charming adventure. Altogether, this is a beautifully rendered, thoroughly appealing title and another feather in Spirin s already crowded cap. School Library Journal

The Duel

First published in 1891, this morality tale pits a scientist, a government worker, his mistress, a deacon, and a physician against one another in a verbal battle of wits and ethics that explodes into a violent contest: The Duel. When Laevsky, a lazy youth who works for the government, tires of his dependent mistress, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, Von Koren, the scientist, delivers a scathing critique of Loevsky’s egotism, forcing the young man to examine his soul. The Duel is a tale of human weakness, the possibility of forgiveness, and a man s ultimate ability to change his ways. It is classic Chekhov, revealing the multifaceted essence of human nature.

The Story of a Nobody

Chekhov’s little known literary gem is a profound and moving work, combining the political tensions of the day with a tale of deep poignancy and sorrow. With St. Petersburg awash with extravagant, dissolute bureaucrats concerned only with increasing their vast riches, a secret movement infiltrates one of its members into one such household. Once there, the man sees for himself the profligacy that he has sworn to oppose yet he also sees purposelessness throughout life. Determining to follow his own values, he embarks upon a new path, little knowing that this too will lead him to tragedy a tragedy he will find impossible to bear.

Letters of Anton Chekhov

Of the eighteen hundred and ninety letters published by Chekhov’s family, Constance Garnett, the translator, chose these letters and passages from letters which best illustrates Chekhov’s life, character and opinions. The brief memoir is abridged and adapted from the biographical sketch by his brother Mihail. Anton Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia, on the Sea of Azov. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov would eventually become one of Russia’s most cherished storytellers. Especially fond of vaudevilles and French farces, he produced some hilarious one act plays, but it is his full length tragedies that have secured him a place among the greatest dramatists of all time. Chekhov began writing short stories during his days as a medical student at the University of Moscow. After graduating in 1884 with a degree in medicine, he began to freelance as a journalist and writer of comic sketches. Early in his career, he mastered the form of the one act play and produced several masterpieces of this genre including The Bear 1888 in which a creditor hounds a young widow, but becomes so impressed when she agrees to fight a duel with him, that he proposes marriage; and The Wedding 1889 in which a bridegroom’s plans to have a general attend his wedding ceremony backfire when the general turns out to be a retired naval captain ‘of the second rank’

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