Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

'Methuen Student Editions' are annotated texts of a wide range of plays. This book contains the complete text of 'Uncle Vanya', a chronology of the playwright's life and work, an introduction to the background of the play, various interpretations, and notes on individual words and phrases.

At a time when the Russian theatre was dominated by melodramas and farces, Chekhov created a new sort of drama that laid bare the lives, loves and yearnings of ordinary people. This collection of plays shows his subtle blend of comedy, tragedy and psychological insight.

In Chekhov's last play, an aristocratic Russian returns home before it is sold to pay the mortgage. While the family has an option to save their house, their slothful nature may prevent them from doing so. Intended as a comedy, this work has all of the hallmarks of a tragedy.

"The Cherry Orchard is the last play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It opened at the Moscow Art Theatre on 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Although Chekhov intended it as a comedy, and it does contain some elements of farce, Stanislavski insisted on directing the play as a tragedy. Since this initial production, directors have had to contend with the dual nature of the play. The play concerns an aristocratic...

From the New York Times bestselling Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves - and our world today. For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us,...

"The Steppe is an account of a nine-year-old boy's frightening journey by wagon train across the steppe of southern Russia. The Duel sets two decadent figures--a fanatical rationalist and a man of literary sensibility--on a collision course that ends in a series of surprising reversals. In The Story of an Unknown Man, a political radical spying on an important official by serving as valet to his son gradually discovers his own terminal illness has...