To N. A. Leikin, 22 November 1886. Moscow.

1 A lively personal-business letter of 22 November 1886 from Chekhov in Moscow to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, editor of the Petersburg humor magazine Oskolki (Fragments). Chekhov encloses a parcel of manuscripts (stories, filler pieces, and a censored proof by the poet Mendelevich), then gives a comic blow-by-blow "report" of a heavy drinking bout the two men had shared after Leikin’s recent visit to Moscow – taverns, a night at Chekhov’s family home, and a raucous send-off at the station. He works through a numbered list of practical follow-ups: a loan of 25 rubles, an arrangement for notifying Leikin by telegram if a story runs late, and a bookselling errand his brother Misha carried out with a bookseller named Petrovsky. The letter closes with family greetings and, as a genuine appended postscript (not an editorial note), the actual list of ten book titles and quantities Petrovsky requested.

2 The letter is valuable for its unbuttoned, comic intimacy – a register very different from Chekhov’s professional correspondence about manuscripts and deadlines, showing the boozy camaraderie of the 1880s Moscow-Petersburg humor-magazine circle. The appended booklist, with its droll comic titles, is an unusually concrete artifact of the popular literature Petrovsky’s shop was stocking, and a small window into the commercial side of the humor press. Editors should take care that the final sections (the booklist) are preserved as genuine letter content, not mistaken for editorial notes.

3 Contains a passing, comic reference to heavy drinking and mild racy allusion (Chekhov’s morning-after glances at a servant girl); handled in period comic register, not explicit.