A French governess taught the children languages. He read literature and the Greek classics including Homer, and also works by Miguel de Cervantes, Ivan Goncharov, William Shakespeare, Ivan Turgenev and Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. For many years until his death he sent books to be added to its collections. He studied music and was a voracious reader, spending afternoons at the Taganrog town library (now named after him). They also worked hard in their father's shop (now a museum, the 'Chekhov Shop') where Anton collected memories and ideas for future stories based on the people he met there. A great lover of nature, young Anton was robust with activity and intelligence, always making jokes, affectionate and playful with his siblings. Growing up in a middle-class family on the shores of the Sea of Azov in pre-Revolution Russia, Anton and his sister and five brothers went fishing, played tennis, and spent leisurely days in the country at their grandfather's. Anton's grandfather had been a serf who worked on the estate of Vladimir Grigorievitch Tchertkov before buying his own freedom in 1841. Chekhov's plays are said to be second only to those of William Shakespeare in stage popularity.Īnton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29 January 1860 in the port town of Taganrog (at the northern tip of the Black Sea between Ukraine and Russia) in Rostov Oblast, Southern Russia, the third of six children born to Yevgenia Yakovlevna Morozov, daughter of a well-traveled cloth merchant and Pavel Yegorovitch (1825-1898), a grocer. His works have inspired countless contemporary authors and playwrights including George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, and Virginia Woolf. His autobiographical journey as seen through the eyes of a child 'The Steppe' earned him the Pushkin Prize in 1888. While he started out with more comedic sketches and doggerel published under pseudonyms such as Antosha Chekhonte, Chekov went on to write dozens of stories, many critically acclaimed as fine exemplars of the craft and still studied today.

He wanted his works to ask the reader questions, not to provide answers. He spurned the more traditional story as moral lesson found in the style of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Through his use of such Chekhovian elements as subjective observation, stream of consciousness, character epiphanies, and juxtapositions of pessimism and humour we are immersed in the lives of Chekhov's complex characters. Often ambiguous, at times humorous, gritty, haunting, ironic, anecdotal, facetious, lyrical, apathetic, bizarre, passionate and tragic, Chekhov's works explore the entire range of the human spirit. Our life will be as peaceful and tender and sweet as a caress. We shall see all evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall enfold the world. We shall see heaven shining like a jewel. I have faith, Uncle, fervent, passionate faith. Ah, then dear, dear Uncle, we shall see that bright and beautiful life we shall rejoice and look back upon our sorrow here a tender smile-and-we shall rest. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian physician, renowned short story author and playwright wrote Uncle Vanya (1899)

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