To A. S. Suvorin, 21 December 1886. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 21 December 1886 to Alexei Suvorin, the wealthy publisher of Novoye Vremya and Chekhov’s most important literary patron and correspondent during these years. Chekhov apologizes for running behind on a commissioned Christmastide (svyatochny) story, promising delivery by the 24th, then closes with holiday greetings and a postscript praising the writer Alexei Bezhetsky (pen name of A. A. Maslov), whose military fiction he had recently been given as a gift.

2 The letter is a small, characteristic window onto Chekhov’s working life in the mid-1880s: a jobbing writer racing a magazine’s holiday deadline, self-deprecating about his own struggles with a story, and generous in praising a lesser-known contemporary’s work over that of the far more famous Turgenev.