“Don’t
tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
(January 1860- July 1904)
Fun facts
Anton
Chekhov was one of Russia's most beloved writers. He wrote plays, short
stories, novellas, non-fiction, and one novel: The Shooting Party (1884). At
the time of his death Anton was second only to Leo Tolstoy in literary
celebrity.
Long
a bachelor, he had a
number of vivacious, pretty, and talented women friends but none for whom he
felt "love, sexual attraction, being of one flesh" in terms strong
enough to propose marriage. But in 1898, when he was 38 and seriously ill, he
met the actress Olga Knipper. By the time they married in May 1901, he not only
was one of Russia's leading literary men, having been the first writer elected
to honorary membership in the Academy of Sciences (January 1890), but was also
engrossed in the theater, madly in love, and gravely tubercular.
Although
Anton Chekhov became a physician he often treated patients for free and earned
money from his writing.
