To Al. P. Chekhov, 16 August 1888. Sumy.

1 Written from Sumy on 16 August 1888 to Chekhov’s elder brother Aleksandr Pavlovich Chekhov, addressed here with the mock-formal nickname "Your Widowerhood" (Aleksandr’s wife had died the previous year). Anton had just returned home after a stay of about a week and a half with the publisher Aleksey Suvorin.

2 A brisk business letter in numbered points: Aleksandr, who worked at Suvorin’s newspaper, is asked to press for advertising and sales reports on Chekhov’s books ("Twilight,Stories,Motley Stories"), then given detailed editorial feedback on a travel piece Aleksandr had written about the Valaam monastery – praised overall but faulted for misplaced emphasis, self-contradiction, and mawkish sentimentality. The letter closes with family news and banter: an invitation to visit a farm Chekhov is thinking of buying, and word that their brother Ivan is to marry that coming May.