My Life

by Chekhov, Anton; Garnett, Constance

• ISBN13: 9780974607825
• ISBN10: 0974607827
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-01
• Publisher: Melville House

Summary

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practice by literature's greatest writers. In the ART OF THE NOVELLA series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time. Renowned as the greatest short story writer ever, Anton Chekhov was also a master of the novella, and perhaps his most overlooked is this gem,My Lifethe tale of a rebellious young man so disgusted with bourgeois society that he drops out to live amongst the working classes, only to find himself confronted by the morally and mentally deadening effects of provincialism. The 1896 tale is partly a commentary on Tolstoyan philosophy, and partly an autobiographical reflection on Chekhov's own small-town background. But it is, more importantly, Chekhov in his prime, displaying all his famous strengthsvivid characters, restrained but telling details, and brilliant psychological observationand one of his most stirring themes: the youthful struggle to maintain idealism against growing isolation.

Author Biography

ANTON CHEKHOV was born into a large family in 1860 in Taganrog, Russia, the grandson of serfs. He supported the family by writing stories for magazines while simultaneously putting himself through medical school – where, tragically, he contracted tuberculosis. He published his first collection, Motley Stories, in 1886, and his second, In the Twilight, a year later. He continued to practice medicine, often pro bono, leading friends to complain about the line of peasants constantly at his door. He also wrote plays, but when critics attacked The Seagull, he vowed to give up playwriting. He did not, and while staging The Cherry Orchard Chekhov collapsed, dying shortly thereafter, in 1904.