To L. N. Trefolev, 20 March 1886. Moscow.

1 A letter of 20 March 1886 from Chekhov in Moscow to the Yaroslavl poet Leonid Nikolayevich Trefolev, thanking him for a letter and a "sheaf" of verses, then turning to practical business: Trefolev is evidently assembling a literary-artistic collection (sbornik) and has asked Chekhov’s help finding illustrators. Chekhov recommends a triumvirate of Moscow artists to run the artistic side of the project – Alexander Yanov (a Slavophile painter), Franz Shekhtel (a noted vignette designer, later the celebrated architect Fyodor Shekhtel), and Chekhov’s own brother Nikolai Chekhov – gives their addresses, and spells out exactly what information Trefolev should send them (format, paper, print run, budget). He closes with a joking quotation from Gogol’s The Government Inspector, a note on his own overwork writing for three humor papers, and an offer to forward the artists’ letters himself.

2 The letter is a useful glimpse of Chekhov as a well-connected literary fixer in 1886, brokering introductions among Moscow’s artistic circle – including his brother Nikolai, an illustrator himself, and Franz Shekhtel, who would go on to become one of Russia’s most important Art Nouveau architects. It shows Chekhov’s characteristic brisk, itemized practicality (the lettered checklist of what the artists need to know) alongside his comic voice, evident in the affectionate opening address and the Gogol tag.