The Short Story

Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 in a seaside town on the northern tip of the Black Sea between Ukrain and Russia within Rostov Oblast, Russia.

 

His mother was the daughter of a cloth merchant and his father was a grocer. His grandfather had worked as a serf before eventaully buying his freedom in 1841 from Vladimir Grigorievitch Tchertkov.

 

While extremely well-known for his short stories, Chekhov graduated from the University of Moscow studying medicine in 1884 and pursued a medical career for the rest of his life. Literature and writing was still a passion for him, and in his own words:

 

"Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other."

 

Chekhov's short stories were the first to refute the popular trend at the time of cause and effect and uniform creation. He advocated a style of writing that explored the human condition and indulged in the nuances that create both our vices and virtues, writing outside the limits of the genre at the time.