To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 20 August 1888. Sumy.

1 Written from the Lintvaryov estate near Sumy on 20 August 1888 to the poet and editor Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheev, whose earlier letter – sent on to Feodosia, where Chekhov had been staying with the publisher Aleksey Suvorin – reaches him only now, forwarded in one of Suvorin’s own envelopes.

2 A brief, warm note: Chekhov defers his real news – his plans for the winter and the novella promised for the October issue of "Severny Vestnik" ("The Northern Herald") – to a fuller letter still to come, and closes with a playful postscript handing the page over to "Monsieur Georges," the nickname of Egor Mikhailovich Lintvaryov, a family friend and gifted amateur pianist often at the Lintvaryov household that summer.