Anton Chekhov Biography

To support his family and pay his tuition fees, he daily writes short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life, many under pseudonyms such as "Antosha Chekhonte" and "Man without a Spleen". Gains admission to the medical school at Moscow University

Writes for Oskolki (Fragments), owned by Nikolai Leikin, one of the leading publishers of the time

Chekhov qualifies as a physician, which he considered his principal profession though he made little money from it and treats the poor for free

Invited to write for the Novoye Vremya (New Times), owned and edited by the millionaire magnate Alexei Suvorin, who paid per line a rate double Leikins, Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend

A theatre manager called Korsh commissions Chekhov to write a play, the result being Ivanov, written in a fortnight

Writes a story collection At Dusk (V Sumerkakh) winning Chekhov the coveted Pushkin Prize "for the best literary production distinguished by high artistic worth"

The death of Chekhovs brother Nikolai from tuberculosis in 1889 influenced A Dreary Story, finished that September, about a man who confronts the end of a life which he realises has been without purpose

Chekhov begins writing his play The Seagull

The Art Theatre commissions more plays from Chekhov & stages Uncle Vanya

The first night of The Seagull at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Petersburg was a fiasco, booed by the audience, and stung Chekhov into renouncing the theatre

Chekhov suffers a major haemorrhage of the lungs while on a visit to Moscow and, with great difficulty, is persuaded to enter a clinic, where the doctors diagnosed tuberculosis on the upper part of his lungs and ordered a change

The play so impressed the playwright Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko that he convinced Konstantin Stanislavsky to direct it for the innovative Moscow Art Theatre

Publication of "Three Sisters"

Death of Anton Chekhov