Selected early short stories 1887
201 Stories by Anton Chekhov
About Anton Chekhov: One of Russia's greatest writers, Chekhov began his career writing jokes and anecdotes for popular magazines to support himself while he studied to become a doctor. Between 1888 and his death he single-handedly revolutionized both the drama and the short story. Near the end of his life he married an actress, Olga Knipper. He died from tuberculosis in 1904, age 44.
About this project: Constance Garnett translated and published 13 volumes of Chekhov stories in the years 1916-1922. Unfortunately, the order of the stories is almost random, and in the last volume Mrs. Garnett stated: 'I regret that it is impossible to obtain the necessary information for a chronological list of all Tchehov's works.' This site presents all 201 stories in the order of their publication in Russia.
http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/
'Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me.' -- Eudora Welty, 1977
1887
097 - Champagne
098 - Frost
099 - The Beggar
100 - Enemies
101 - Darkness
102 - Polinka
103 - Drunk
104 - An Inadvertence
105 - Verotchka
106 - Shrove Tuesday
107 - A Defenceless Creature
108 - A Bad Business
109 - Home
110 - The Lottery Ticket
111 - Too Early!
112 - Typhus
113 - In Passion Week
114 - A Mystery
115 - The Cossack
116 - The Letter
117 - An Adventure
118 - The Examining Magistrate
119 - Aborigines
120 - Volodya
122 - Bad Weather
123 - A Play
124 - A Transgression
125 - From the Diary of a Violent-Tempered Man
126 - Uprooted
127 - A Father
128 - A Happy Ending
129 - In the Coach-House
130 - Zinotchka
131 - The Doctor
132 - The Pipe
133 - An Avenger
134 - The Post
135 - The Runaway
136 - A Problem
137 - The Old House
138 - The Cattle Dealers
139 - Expensive Lessons
140 - The Lion and the Sun
141 - In Trouble
142 - The Kiss
145 - A Lady's Story
CHAMPAGNE
A WAYFARER'S STORY
by Anton Chekhov
IN the year in which my story begins I had a job at a little station on one of our southwestern railways. Whether I had a gay or a dull life at the station you can judge from the fact that for fifteen miles round there was not one human habitation, not one woman, not one decent tavern; and in those days I was young, strong, hot- headed, giddy, and foolish. The only distraction I could possibly find was in the windows of the passenger trains, and in the vile vodka which the Jews drugged with thorn-apple. Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a woman's head at a carriage window, and one would stand like a statue without breathing and stare at it until the train turned into an almost invisible speck; or one would drink all one could of the loathsome vodka till one was stupefied and did not feel the passing of the long hours and days. Upon me, a native of the north, the steppe produced the effect of a deserted Tatar cemetery. In the summer the steppe with its solemn calm, the monotonous chur of the grasshoppers, the transparent moonlight from which one could not hide, reduced me to listless melancholy; and in the winter the irreproachable whiteness of the steppe, its cold distance, long nights, and howling wolves oppressed me like a heavy nightmare. There were several people living at the station: my wife and I, a deaf and scrofulous telegraph clerk, and three watchmen. My assistant, a young man who was in consumption, used to go for treatment to the town, where he stayed for months at a time, leaving his duties to me together with the right of pocketing his salary. I had no children, no cake would have tempted visitors to come and see me, and I could only visit other officials on the line, and that no oftener than once a month.
I remember my wife and I saw the New Year in. We sat at table, chewed lazily, and heard the deaf telegraph clerk monotonously tapping on his apparatus in the next room. I had already drunk five glasses of drugged vodka, and, propping my heavy head on my fist, thought of my overpowering boredom from which there was no escape,
