The Three Sisters, a Chekhov play first produced at the Moscow Art Theater in 1901, is the story of a wealthy Russian family who longs to move to Moscow, but the three sisters find themselves mired in provincial life. Like Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters is a play of thwarted desires and indirect action.

In The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov’s characters long to preserve an orchard that holds fond memories rather than allowing it to be chopped down and turned into a subdivision.

Chekhov was deeply influenced by Leo Tolstoy. There are parallels between Tolstoy’s treatment of the peasants and of religious faith in Anna Karenina and Chekhov’s treatment of the same subjects in Uncle Vanya. However, Anna Karenina is also considered one of the world’s great, tragic love stories.

Like Chekhov George Eliot was a proponent of realism in literature. Her masterpiece— Middlemarch—is the story of Dorothea Brooke, a woman who wants to make a worthwhile contribution to society but is thwarted by a tragically misbegotten marriage.

Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady is one of the world’s finest novels about deception and frustrated desires.