Ladies and Other Stories: Ladies and Other Stories

By Anton Chekhov

Chekhov has always been huge inspiration for many great writers who came in contact with Chekhov's art. Thomas Man wrote that Chekhov's short stories attain to full epic stature and can even surpass in intensity the great towering novels. 'If I understood that better in later life than in my youth, this was largely owing to my growing intimacy with Chekhov’s art; for his short stories rank with all that is greatest and best in European literature.' he concluded . But what is it that makes Chekhov's stories so poignant, so striking and so inspiring? This volume offers some Chekhov's best stories, including: An Inadvertence, A Tripping Tongue, Boots, In An Hotel, Ladies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Interactive Media
• Release date: Nov 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787243613

Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian doctor, short-story writer, and playwright. Born in the port city of Taganrog, Chekhov was the third child of Pavel, a grocer and devout Christian, and Yevgeniya, a natural storyteller. His father, a violent and arrogant man, abused his wife and children and would serve as the inspiration for many of the writer’s most tyrannical and hypocritical characters. Chekhov studied at the Greek School in Taganrog, where he learned Ancient Greek. In 1876, his father’s debts forced the family to relocate to Moscow, where they lived in poverty while Anton remained in Taganrog to settle their finances and finish his studies. During this time, he worked odd jobs while reading extensively and composing his first written works. He joined his family in Moscow in 1879, pursuing a medical degree while writing short stories for entertainment and to support his parents and siblings. In 1876, after finishing his degree and contracting tuberculosis, he began writing for St. Petersburg’s Novoye Vremya, a popular paper which helped him to launch his literary career and gain financial independence. A friend and colleague of Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, and Ivan Bunin, Chekhov is remembered today for his skillful observations of everyday Russian life, his deeply psychological character studies, and his mastery of language and the rhythms of conversation.

Book preview

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Anton Chekhov

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Anton Chekhov

Ladies and Other Stories

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Volume 6

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Published by Sovereign

This edition first published in 2017

Copyright © 2017 Sovereign

All Rights Reserve

ISBN: 9781787243613

Contents

AN INADVERTENCE

A TRIPPING TONGUE

NOTES

BOOTS

IN AN HOTEL

LADIES

AN INADVERTENCE

PYOTR PETROVITCH STRIZHIN, the nephew of Madame Ivanov, the colonel’s widow — the man whose new goloshes were stolen last year, — came home from a christening party at two o’clock in the morning. To avoid waking the household he took off his things in the lobby, made his way on tiptoe to his room, holding his breath, and began getting ready for bed without lighting a candle.

Strizhin leads a sober and regular life. He has a sanctimonious expression of face, he reads nothing but religious and edifying books, but at the christening party, in his delight that Lyubov Spiridonovna had passed through her confinement successfully, he had permitted himself to drink four glasses of vodka and a glass of wine, the taste of which suggested something midway between vinegar and castor oil. Spirituous liquors are like sea-water and glory: the more you imbibe of them the greater your thirst. And now as he undressed, Strizhin was aware of an overwhelming craving for drink.

I believe Dashenka has some vodka in the cupboard in the right-hand corner, he thought. If I drink one wine-glassful, she won’t notice it.

After some hesitation, overcoming his fears, Strizhin went to the cupboard. Cautiously opening the door he felt in the right-hand corner for a bottle and poured out a wine-glassful, put the bottle back in its place, then, making the sign of the cross, drank it off. And immediately something like a miracle took place. Strizhin was flung back from the cupboard to the chest with fearful force like a bomb. There were flashes before his eyes, he felt as though he could not breathe, and all over his body he had a sensation as