To N. A. Leikin, 4 March 1886. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 4 March 1886 to Nikolai Leikin, editor of the humor magazine Oskolki ("Splinters") and one of Chekhov’s chief early publishers and correspondents. The letter is a characteristic grab-bag of business and chat: an account of a story written in interrupted bursts amid a doctor’s-house-call errand and a friend’s sudden illness, an update on a woodcut vignette awaiting payment, a frank critique of a story Leikin had submitted (Chekhov argues against the epistolary form as a literary device), wry remarks on a rival magazine’s lavish anniversary banquet, teasing about Petersburg doctors overprescribing medicines, and grumbling about a fee that arrived late and a hoped-for book that is printing slower than expected.

2 The letter is valuable less for any single revelation than for its texture: it shows Chekhov mid-career as a jobbing writer for the comic press, juggling medical practice, deadline pressure, and editorial back-and-forth in the same breath, and closes with small vivid touches – an interrupting doorbell, spring weather – typical of his epistolary style.