Anton Chekhov (Cyclopedia of World Authors)

Anton Chekhov (CHEHK-awf)—also written Chekov, Tchehov, and Tchekhov—was Russia’s foremost playwright and one of the great masters of the short story. He was the third child of Pravel Yegorovitch Chekhov, a “merchant in the third guild”—that is, the proprietor of a small grocery shop—in Taganrog, where the future writer was born in 1860. When, after an unhappy childhood, he entered Moscow University to study medicine, he assumed the burden and responsibility of supporting the family, which he undertook to do by writing humorous sketches and stories for periodicals. The...

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