To Ye. A. Sysoyeva, 7 November 1887. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 7 November 1887 to Yevgenia Andreyevna Sysoyeva, a writer and editor who had invited Chekhov, via the "Novoye Vremya" editorial office, to visit her and to contribute to "Rodnik" ("The Spring"), a St. Petersburg children’s magazine she was then involved with. Chekhov, twenty-seven and already a busy contributor to the Petersburg and Moscow press, replies with formal courtesy, declining the visit on account of distance but agreeing in principle to try writing for children.

2 The letter is brief and businesslike, cast in the polite epistolary register of the day ("Dear Madam,With respect I have the honor to be"), quite unlike the joking, intimate tone of Chekhov’s letters to family and close friends. He is candid about his inexperience – he had never written specifically for a child readership – and about his unfamiliarity with the magazine’s actual program, promising only to look into it and try his hand when time allowed.