This collection examines the letters of Anton Chekhov, which have received relatively little scholarly attention. The contributors approach the letters from a variety of angles—biography, psychology, literary criticism, poetics, and history—to characterize Chekhov’s key epistolary concerns and to examine their role in his life.

Of the thirty volumes in the authoritative Academy edition of Chekhov's collected works, fully twelve are devoted to the writer's letters. This is the first book in English or Russian addressing this substantial—though until now neglected—epistolary corpus. The majority of the essays gathered here represent new contributions by the world's major Chekhov scholars, written especially for this volume, or classics of Russian criticism appearing in English for the first time. The introduction addresses the role of letters in Chekhov's life and characterizes the writer's key epistolary concerns. After a series of essays addressing publication history, translation, and problems of censorship, scholars analyze the letters' generic qualities that draw upon, variously, prose, poetry, and drama. Individual thematic studies focus on the letters as documents reflecting biographical, cultural, and philosophical issues. The book culminates in a collection of short, at times lyrical, essays by eminent scholars and writers addressing a particularly memorable Chekhov letter. Chekhov's Letters appeals to scholars, writers, and theater professionals, as well to a general audience.

Introduction: Chekhov's Letters: An Integral Body of Work, Carol Apollonio and Radislav Lapushin

Part I: Publication History, Reception, and Textual Issues

Chapter 1: Reader Reception of Chekhov’s Letters at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, Liya Bushkanets

Chapter 2: Some Like It Hot: The Censored Letters, Vladimir Kataev

Chapter 3: On Editing and Translating Chekhov's Letters, Rosamund Bartlett

Chapter 4: Imaginary Chekhov? Yet Another Fabrication by Boris Sadovskoy, Igor Sukhikh

Part II: Approaches to a Body of Work

Chapter 5: Chekhov's “Postal Prose,” Vladimir Lakshin

Chapter 6: Letters Not about Chekhov: On How We Read Chekhov's Letters, Michael Finke

Chapter 7: Chekhov’s Letters: Slow Reading, Alevtina Kuzicheva

Chapter 8: The Writer’s Correspondence as a Narrative Genre: Aspects of Chekhov’s Epistolary Prose, Irina Gitovich

Part III: Genre

Chapter 9: A Unity of Vision: Chekhov’s Letters, Alexander Chudakov

Chapter 10: “I Listen to My Irtysh Beating against Coffins”: The Existential and Dreamlike in Chekhov’s Letters, Radislav Lapushin

Chapter 11: A Playwright’s Letters, Emma Polotskaya

Part IV: From Life to Art: Readings

Chapter 12: Homo Sachaliensis: Chekhov as a Family Man, Galina Rylkova

Chapter 13: Russian Binaries and the Question of Culture: Chekhov’s True Intelligent, Svetlana Evdokimova

Chapter 14: Burned Letters: Reconstructing the Chekhov-Levitan Friendship, Serge Gregory

Chapter 15: Verbal Games and Animal Metaphors in Chekhov’s Correspondence with Olga Knipper, John Douglas Clayton

Chatper 16: The Withered Tree, Zinovy Paperny

Chapter 17: Anton Chekhov and D. H. Lawrence: The Art of Letters and the Discourse of Mortality, Katherine Tiernan O'Connor

Part V: My Favorite Chekhov Letter

Chapter 18: Preface: Chekhov’s Blotter, Dina Rubina

Chapter 19: Chekhov's First Dissertation Proposal (to Alexander Chekhov, from Moscow, 17/18 April 1883), Michael Finke

Chapter 20: Letters, Dreams and Their Environments (to Dmitry Grigorovich, from Moscow, 12 February 1887), Matthew Mangold

Chapter 21: Chekhov's Letter to Lermontov (to Mikhail Chekhov, from the ship “Dir,” 28 July 1888), Katherine Tiernan O'Connor

Chapter 22: A Favorite Chekhov Letter: Mission Impossible (Letters from 1888–89), Robin Feuer Miller

Chapter 23: Chekhov's “Holy of Holies”: The Poetics of Corporeity (to Alexander Pleshcheev, from Moscow, 4 October 1888), Svetlana Evdokimova

Chapter 24: Winged Things (to Alexei Suvorin, from Moscow, 17 October 1889), Elizabeth Geballe

Chapter 25: A Fragment from the Aggregate: Sinai and Sakhalin in Chekhov's Letters to Suvorin

(to Alexei Suvorin, 9 March 1890; 9 December 1890; 17 December 1890), Robert Louis Jackson

Chapter 26: Why Not Stay Here, so Long as It's not Boring? (to family, from Siberia, 23–26 June 1890), Carol Apollonio

Chapter 27: A Prescription to Keep Love at Bay (to Lika Mizinova, from Bogimovo, 20 June 1891), Serge Gregory

Chapter 28: Sympathy for the Devil (to Alexei Suvorin from Melikhovo, 8 April 1892), Cathy Popkin

Chapter 29: Doctor Chekhov Comes to Terms with Tolstoy (to Alexei Suvorin, from Melikhovo, 1 August 1892), Caryl Emerson

Chapter 30: In the Hospital (to Rimma Vashchuk, from Moscow, 27 March 1897), Rosamund Bartlett

Chapter 31: The Power of Memory (to Fyodor Batyushkov, from Nice, 15 December 1897), Elena Gorokhova

Chapter 32: I Have no Faith in Our Intelligentsia (to Ivan Orlov, from Yalta, 22 February 1899), Andrei Stepanov

Chapter 33: Forgive, Forget, and Write (to Ivan Leontyev (Shcheglov), from Yalta, 2 February 1900), Sharon M. Carnicke

Chapter 34: In Place of a Conclusion (to Grigory Rossolimo and to Maria Chekhova, from Badenweiler, 28 June 1904), Radislav Lapushin