Mikhail Alekseyevich Suvorin

Reading notes

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 11–12 April 1888. Moscow. §14 Mikhail Suvorin

  Aleksei Suvorin's son, who ran the bookselling side of the family business, including distribution to railway-station stalls; Chekhov wants Alexander to press him about the absence of his books from those stalls.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 18–24 April 1888. Moscow. §4 M. Suvorin's answer

  Mikhail Alekseyevich Suvorin, Aleksei Suvorin's son, who managed the family's book distribution and sales; Chekhov dismisses his explanation for why the book cannot be found in the shops.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 11 April 1889. Moscow. §7 Mikhail Alekseyevich

  Aleksei Suvorin's son Mikhail Alekseyevich Suvorin, asked here about a railway-line vacancy. Distinct from "A. A. Suvorin" (\S12 of this letter), Suvorin's other son Alexei Alekseyevich Suvorin -- two different Suvorin sons, kept explicitly separate in the entity records (vs).

• To S. N. Filippov, 2 February 1890. Petersburg. §5 His children are sick with scarlet fever

  Scarlet fever (скарлатина) was a common and often serious childhood illness in this period; the household quarantine Chekhov describes -- Mikhail Alekseyevich Suvorin "sitting at home as if in quarantine" -- reflects ordinary contemporary practice for containing the infection, not a dramatic crisis Chekhov is flagging. It is the plain, practical reason he gives for not yet having managed to see Suvorin's son in person.

• To N. M. Lintvareva, April 1891. Rome. §3 Suvorin's son, who is in charge of the book trade on the railways

  Aleksei Suvorin's son Mikhail Alekseyevich Suvorin, who managed distribution and sales for the family's Novoye Vremya publishing and bookselling business, including the railway-station bookstalls -- the same figure referred to a few lines later as "Suvorin-fils." Distinct from the elder Suvorin, Alexei Sergeyevich, the paper's editor, whom Chekhov names later in this same section under a mismatched patronymic; see the note at that anchor.

• To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Monte Carlo. §5 Suvorin fils

  "Suvorin-фис" in the source, using the French "fils" ("son") to distinguish Aleksei Suvorin's son from his father; the same figure and the same nickname established two letters earlier in this corpus (\S3: "Suvorin's son, who is in charge of the book trade on the railways" / "Suvorin-fils"), i.e. Mikhail Alekseyevich Suvorin, a travel companion on this leg of the 1891 trip -- not Aleksei Suvorin himself, the paper's editor and Chekhov's regular correspondent.

• To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Nice. §4 Suvorin fils

  Mikhail Alekseyevich Suvorin, son of Chekhov's friend and publisher A. S. Suvorin, called "Suvorin-fis" using the French "fils" to distinguish him from his father; Chekhov's companion at the roulette table on this leg of the trip, continuing directly from the losing evening reported two days earlier in (\S5, "Suvorin fils lost 300 francs").