Anton Chekhov. Earliest Stories - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This volume comprises a complete annotated translaton of Anton Chekhov's fifty eight earliest stories, arranged in chronological order. Written between 1880 and 1882, when Chekhov was in his early twenties and still at medical school, they were all published in comic magazines. Many have never been translated before. Ranging from comic tales, hilarious skits to literary parodies, outrageous potboilers and poignant novellas, they offer a revealing window into this little known early chapter of Chekhov's life and literary career. The collection represents the conclusion of a unique "crowd-translated" project involving eighty five volunteers from nine countries, including the editors. Due to the collaborative nature of the early processes of revision, the translations are collectively ascribed.

Review Quotes

"Absurd, zany, mordant and melodramatic - these stories are full of surprises, and are the perfect antidote for anyone who still thinks of Chekhov as gloomy."

--Geraldine James, actress

"Chekhov's early stories are his spring--touching, turbulent, full of vitality, with bursts of sunlight, mischievous winds, and an ironic kaleidoscope of Russian faces. His gray, twilight, aching autumn is still ahead, so rejoice in springtime Chekhov!

--Vladimir Sorokin, author

"This international, invigorating, and in many ways utopian translation project brings a wealth of stories, voices, tones and nuances to Chekhov's early stories."

--Sasha Dugdale, poet, playwright and translator

"In this groundbreaking edition of Chekhov's earliest publications (1880-1882), Rosamund Bartlett makes available in English the full complement of stories, sketches, and humoresques included in volume 1 of the definitive scholarly edition of his work. Given that most English-language collections of Chekhov's prose feature his later, more widely known stories, this volume provides an invaluable resource for scholars, writers, and general readers alike.

This alone would have been enough. But in her astute introduction Bartlett also provides a riveting discussion of how the history of publication and republication of individual works, combined with the serial revisions and rewritings undertaken by Chekhov himself and compounded by the eventual compilation and recompilation of an authorized Collected Works, which grew (in the years after Chekhov's death) from the original ten to an eventual twenty-two volumes, vastly complicate the matter of dating and chronology. Add to the proliferation of versions in Russian the further complications introduced by serial translations of this or that story in this or that version tagged with this or that date--and, as it turns out, even the scholarly thirty-volume edition contributes to this chronological jumble. In this context, earliness itself merits scrutiny.

All of the above makes an irrefutable argument for the significance of Bartlett's project--but so do the stunning translations. The volume's fifty-eight stories have been brought into English by a collaborative of eighty-three translators from nine countries. Each began working on a single text, then went on to participate in a recursive process of "crowd translation." The work proceeded so collaboratively and the process ultimately proved so productive that the results are credited to the collective as a whole. The English versions are thus beautifully coherent--yet they are also stylistically divergent, as demanded by Chekhov's take-offs on a stunning range of speech acts and genres: letters, testimony, statistical tables, speeches, catalogues, excerpts, almanacs, and more. The stories themselves are quite wonderful, and these new translations represent a tremendous achievement.

Finally, Bartlett's editorial apparatus deftly makes sense when clarification is required or a private joke needs explaining. She has shrewdly placed immediate sense-making notes at the bottom of the page, with more extensive background information at the end of the volume; the format itself makes the book both maximally accessible and a great pleasure to read."

--Cathy Popkin, Jesse and George Siegel Professor in the Humanities, Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University

"What a gift to readers of Chekhov: the most comprehensive edition of his earliest fiction in English! Assembled through the collaborative efforts of more than eighty translators, this remarkable volume is an outstanding collective achievement. Chekhov's early creations reveal a side that may surprise those who know only his mature works: irreverent, versatile, brimming with raw energy, and often uproariously funny. Read together, they offer a fresh insight into how the future master of subtle understatement was finding his voice. Kudos to the indefatigable Rosamund Bartlett and her tireless team of translators for bringing this treasure to light. For any lover of Chekhov, this book overflows with delights, discoveries, and revelations. A second volume, please!"

--Radislav Lapushin, Associate Professor, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"Chekhov's Earliest Stories: Stories, Novellas, Humoresques 1880-1882, edited by Rosamund Bartlett and Elena Michajlowska, is a landmark publication. The perennial, deep engagement with Chekhov has burgeoned in recent decades: adaptations of his works abound. Is there any other writer, except perhaps Shakespeare, who continuously reinvents the world the way Chekhov does? Yet many of his early works have never been translated into English, and this is the first complete translation of all his very earliest stores, accompanied by helpful annotations. Bartlett, a foremost English translator-scholarworldwide, has written a groundbreaking introduction brimming with vital new information and insight. She and her distinguished colleague Michajlowska have assembled a dazzling international team of 83 translators to give us this uniquely precious collection. Chekhov virtually leaps off the pages in these often absurd, edgy, funny but always keenly observed earliest works."

--Robin Feuer Miller, Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities, Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, Brandeis University

"This is the definitive English text of Chekhov beginnings, the best window we have into the first three years of his career. If Chekhov had known, in his early twenties, that the half-baked pieces he was sending out to cheap periodicals would one day be treated with such consummate editorial care, in a volume culled from the collective international work of almost a hundred translators and scholars, he would likely have been delighted, amused, and mortified. And so are we, reading him at his most unguarded."

--Yuri Corrigan, Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, Boston University

About the Author

Rosamund Bartlett is the author of Chekhov: Scenes from a Life (Free Press), editor and co-translator of Chekhov: A Life in Letters (Penguin Classics), and translator of two anthologies of Chekhov's stories: About Love and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics) and The Exclamation Mark and Other Stories (Hesperus Press)

Elena Michajlowska is a trustee of the Anton Chekhov Foundation. She completed an MA in screenwriting and production at the University of Westminster, and has worked on numerous film, art and tech projects, including PutschYourself, an interactive documentary prompted by the Soviet coup of 1991 exploring state violence and collective memory.