The Lady with the Pet Dog | Author Biography

Born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia, Chekhov, the third of six children, was the grandson of a serf who bought his freedom. His father owned a small grocery business which went bankrupt, leaving the family impoverished. Chekhov managed to earn a scholarship to study medicine at the University of Moscow, and by 1884 he went into practice. By this time Chekhov had published humorous sketches in magazines in order to support his family. He supported his mother and sisters for many years, turning out sketches and stories with astonishing speed while also practicing medicine.

Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov

Famous for the profound influence of his plays on the course of modern drama, Chekhov perhaps exerted an even greater influence on the modern short story. While he is known for his sympathy for and insight into the human condition, his stories ultimately exhibited dispassionate emotional balance, rigorous stylistic control, and a rational, ironic, and sometimes cynical attitude toward human relationships and aspirations. It is Chekhov's cool, detached artfulness that distinguished his work from the confessional style of Dostoevsky, the moral fervor of Tolstoy, and the absurdist fantasies of Gogol. Critics note that Chekhov wrote ‘‘The Lady with the Pet Dog’’—the story of a middle-aged man's belated discovery of true love—shortly before he himself married actress Olga Knipper in 1901. Their love was bittersweet, as he did not expect to live long. Some critics point out that just as Gurov felt bored and disgusted by the triviality of Moscow society in the absence of Anna, Chekhov felt miserable among high society at a health resort in Yalta (where he composed the story while seeking a tuberculosis cure) because he was separated from Olga. Like Gurov, Chekhov loved the company of women and seemed to share a special sympathy with them but simultaneously remained somewhat detached.

Chekhov was influenced by Tolstoy's ideas on ascetic morality and nonresistance to evil. He especially became more actively concerned about human suffering after visiting and caring for patients at a penal colony on the island of Sakhalin. In one of his most famous stories, ‘‘Ward Six,’’ Chekhov depicts a doctor's inner journey from philosophical detachment to deep human sympathy, which resembles Gurov's journey from a thoughtless and cynical lady's man to a deeply sympathetic lover in ‘‘The Lady with the Pet Dog.’’

Chekhov's first major work as a dramatist, The Seagull, was produced in 1896 by the Moscow Art Theater. Although the first performance of this unprecedentedly realistic and "uneventful" play caused the outraged audience to riot, it was soon appreciated as a new and profound kind of theater and was followed by Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, and The Three Sisters. Chekhov died from tuberculosis in 1904 in a Black Forest health spa.