Memories of Chekhov: Accounts of the Writer from His Family, Friends and Contemporaries

This revelatory documentary biography of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), one of the world’s best playwrights, collects more than 100 written recollections of Chekhov’s close friends, family and colleague writers and artists, such as Ivan Bunin, Konstantin Stanislavsky and Maxim Gorky. Drawn from rare periodicals and obscure archival sources from the 1880s to the 1930s, these accounts, few of which have ever before been translated to English, address his affairs with female admirers, his passions and hobbies, his visits to shelters for the homeless, his support of aspiring writers, as well as his advice to theater directors, actors and writers. A complement to the wealth of scholarly material on Chekhov, this work offers new discoveries for both specialists and general enthusiasts.

Peter Sekirin received his Ph.D. in Russian literature at the University of Toronto in 1999. He has been working as Research Associate at the Center for Russian Studies at the University of Toronto for eight years. He has translated three of Tolstoy’s works, A Calendar of Wisdom, Divine and Human and Wise Thoughts For Every Day as well as two collections of short stories by Anton Chekhov and the biography Memories of Chekhov. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.