Forty Stories

I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean – wherever my imagination ranges.”

– Anton Chekhov

If any one writer can be said to have invented the modem short story, it is Anton Chekhov. It is not just that Chekhov democratized this art form; more than that, he changed the thrust of short fiction from relating to revealing.

And what marvelous and unbearable things are revealed in these Forty Stories. The abashed happiness of a woman in the presence of the husband who abandoned her years before. The obsequious terror of the official who accidentally sneezes on a general. The poignant astonishment of an aging Don Juan overtaken by love. Spanning the entirety of Chekhov’s career and including such masterpieces as “Surgery,” “The Huntsman,” “Anyuta,” “Sleepy-head,” “The Lady With the Pet Dog,” and “The Bishop,” this collection manages to be amusing, dazzling, and supremely moving – often within a single page.

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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian playwright and short story writer, widely regarded as one of history’s greatest short fiction writers. His theatrical output includes four classics, and his short stories are highly esteemed by both writers and critics. Alongside Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is recognized as a pivotal figure in the emergence of early modernism in theatre.

Chekhov pursued his medical practice throughout much of his writing career, famously stating, “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.”

Following the initial unfavorable reception of The Seagull in 1896, Chekhov distanced himself from theatre. However, the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre. This theatre company also produced Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and premiered his final two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four plays present challenges to actors and audiences alike, as Chekhov’s work emphasizes a “theatre of mood” and a “submerged life in the text” over conventional plot progression.

Initially writing stories for financial reasons, Chekhov’s growing artistic ambition led him to introduce formal innovations that significantly influenced the development of the modern short story. He did not shy away from the complexity this presented to readers, asserting that an artist’s role was to pose questions rather than provide answers.

Anton Chekhov authored hundreds of short stories and several plays, earning recognition as both the preeminent Russian storyteller and the father of modern drama.

Robert Payne (1911-1983) was a writer celebrated for his novels, poems, and articles, with a particular specialization in biography and history. After living and studying abroad in Asia, he relocated to the United States, where he became a professor of English literature and remained in New York for the rest of his life. Payne was a prolific biographer, authoring significant works on figures such as Hitler, Stalin, Marx, Mao Zedong, Lenin, and Gandhi.

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