To N. A. Leikin, 11 August 1883. Moscow.

Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin was the editor of Oskolki ("Splinters"), the Petersburg humor weekly that ran the bulk of Chekhov’s early comic writing under his pseudonym "Antosha Chekhonte." In August 1883 Chekhov was twenty-three, still training as a medical student, and supporting a large household by turning out sketches, captions, and squibs for the popular press at a punishing rate – the "stealing time for literature" he mentions here is not a figure of speech but a description of his actual working conditions that summer.

The letter’s occasion is almost absurdly small: a cartoon drawn by his older brother Nikolai (the "brother-artist" of the letter, a talented but erratic illustrator) needs a particular grade of drawing paper – torchon, a coarse-textured stock favored for pen-and-ink work – that cannot be found anywhere in Moscow. The whole letter turns on this one household errand, handled with the mock-solemn apology and self-deprecation that mark Chekhov’s business correspondence with editors: he is asking a favor and knows it, and turns the asking itself into a small comic performance.

Two further details repay attention. "Agafopod Edinitsyn" is not a real correspondent but one of Chekhov’s own invented pseudonyms – he is quietly submitting his own work to Oskolki under a second, fictional name, a practice not uncommon for a writer publishing at this volume across several outlets at once. And "Ye. Verner" is a young writer Chekhov has taken it upon himself to warn off cheap Moscow journalism, in the same protective, faintly paternal tone – already at twenty-three – that recurs throughout his letters to younger and less disciplined writers over the following two decades.