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[CHEKHOV] Povesti i rasskazy [i.e. Novellas and Short Stories]

Chekhov, A.

Moscow: Tip. vysochaishe utverzhd. T-va I.D. Sytina, 1894. Item #1404

285, [3] pp. 19,5x13,5 cm. In contemporary half leather with gilt lettering on the spine.

Lifetime edition.
Chekhov is the author of over 550 stories. This collection consists of eleven stories written in the late 1880s and the early 1890s. It includes “A Woman Kindom” (1894), “The Grasshopper” (1892), “The Black Monk” (1894), “In Exile” (1892), “Rothschild’s Violin” (1894), “The Two Volodyas” (1893), “The Teacher of Literature” (1894), “At a Country House” (1894), “A Father” (1887), “The Student” (1894) and “Neighbors” (1892). All of them were previously published in various magazines.
Chekhov wrote that “The Student” was his favorite story, which he slightly enlarged for publication in this collection. When including the story “A Father”, Chekhov made small cuts, removed some vernacular and distorted words in the characters’ speech, and sharpened old Musatov’s grandiloquent speeches.
The short story “The Two Volodyas” suffered severe censorship when published in the newspaper Russkie Vedomosti [i.e. Russian News]. On December 28, 1893, Chekhov complained in a letter to V. Gol’tsev: “Ah, my story in ‘Russkiye Vedomosti’ was cut so hard that they cut off my head with my hair. Chastity is purely childish, but cowardice is amazing. They might throw out a few lines, whatever, but they brushed aside the middle, gnawed off the end and so slandered my story that it was even sickening. Well, I suppose it is cynical, but then it shouldn’t have been printed at all, or it would have been fair to say at least a word to the author, or write to the author, especially since the story didn’t get into the Christmas issue and was postponed for an indefinite time.” Also, significant changes were made to the main characters of the story “Neighbors.” Thus, in the magazine version, the liberal views of Vlasich were condemned by Pyotr Mikhailych much more severely. In the text of this 1894 collection, the protagonist’s self-abuse is weakened: two large pieces of text where Pyotr Mikhailovich condemns indecision in defending his own thoughts were deleted.

Worldcat shows copies located in Yale and North Carolina Universities, Amherst College.

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