Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29 January, 1860, in Taganrog, a provincial town in southern Russia. He was the son of a grocer and the grandson of a serf who had bought his freedom and the freedom of his family. His modest background and upbringing were crucial to his development as a writer. Anton was the third son of six children, five of whom were boys. His father was a severe and profoundly religious man. His mother, on the other hand, was a kind and tender woman. In later years Chekhov used to say: "Our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother.”
While still in high school, Anton Chekhov began his literary experiments. During that time he wrote a lot of sketches, short stories, poems and literary parodies. Chekhov’s first work was published in 1879.
After he graduated from high school, in 1879, Chekhov went to Moscow to study medicine. While attending medical school, he began to publish short stories in magazines. Until 1883, Chekhov wrote only under pseudonyms (Antosha Chekhonte, A Man without a Spleen, etc). In 1884, he graduated from the university and began to practice medicine.
Chekhov’s first book of collected stories, Motley Tales, was published in 1886, and brought him real success.
During his creative life, Chekhov wrote hundreds of stories as well as numerous plays that gained him a worldwide reputation. Among his plays, the most famous are The Sea Gull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1897), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904). Most of his plays were staged by the Moscow Art Theater, under the direction of C. S. Stanislavsky, one of the pioneer directors of modern theater.
Anton Chekhov was always responsive to the lives of poor and aggrieved people. In 1890, he went to Siberia and wrote about the inhumane treatment of convicts (which he described in the book Sakhalin Island). When living in Melikhovo (60 km from Moscow), from 1892 to 1899, he built three schools for local children and, as a practicing doctor, treated peasants, including providing treatment during a cholera epidemic.
Chekhov was a realistic writer and a chronicler of his times. His works reflect the backwardness of provincial life, the decline of the nobility, and the weakness of intellectuals. Chekhov’s characters are often bored, unable to connect with others, and more willing to talk than act. In plays and later stories, his style depends on creating an atmosphere, a mood – often sad but lyrical. This sad atmosphere penetrates many of Chekhov’s later works, partly because of the social conditions in Russia, but probably also because of his awareness of his serious and lingering illness – tuberculosis of the lungs. This disease forced him to spent frequent periods in sanatoriums. In 1899, Chekhov sold country estate in Melikhovo and moved to his own villa (White Dacha) in Yalta, the Crimea. For the final three years of his life, Chekhov was married to Olga Knipper, one of the leading actresses playing at the Moscow Art Theater.
Chekhov died of pulmonary tuberculosis on the 2nd of July, 1904, in Germany. His body was taken to Moscow, and buried there in the cemetery of the Novodyevichy Monastery, beside his father's tomb.