To I. L. Leontyev, 29 August 1889. Sumy.

Date and addressee. Written August 29, 1889, from Sumy (Chekhov’s summer residence at the Lintvaryov estate, Kharkov province), to Ivan Leontyevich Leontyev (pen name Shcheglov), a close friend, fellow writer, and occasional playwright. Chekhov addresses him with the affectionate nickname "Zhanchik"/"Zhan" (from "Jean"), a running private joke playing on Shcheglov’s francophone pseudonym-persona. The letter anticipates Chekhov’s return to Moscow (he gives his winter address: Kudrinskaya- Sadovaya, Korneyev’s house) after the summer at Sumy.

A newsy, affectionate personal letter mixing literary shop-talk with gossip and banter. Chekhov: (1) gives travel and mailing instructions; (2) teases/congratulates Shcheglov for turning away from playwriting ("Melpomene") back to prose fiction, with a wry calculation that there are far more playwrights than fiction writers and that prose pays better than the theater — citing Shcheglov’s own stories "Famochka" and "The Rooster" against his plays "The Theatergoers" and "The Country Husband"; (3) reports he has written nothing for the theater this season, having started and abandoned "The Wood Demon" (Leshy) in May–June 1889 — this is the play that would later be reworked into Uncle Vanya; (4) mentions a story in progress (not due in print before November) in which a young female character partly draws on traits of Shcheglov himself — an intimate, joking aside; (5) asks after their mutual friend Kazimir Barantsevich, a writer, requesting his address; (6) sends family regards and invites Shcheglov to visit in Moscow; (7) reports secondhand praise from a court performance of "The Proposal" (Predlozhenie) at Krasnoye Selo (site of the imperial summer theater near St. Petersburg), where actors Pavel Svobodin and Konstantin Varlamov performed so well that the Tsar (Alexander III) made a complimentary remark about Chekhov — which Chekhov turns into a joking aside about expecting the Order of St. Stanislas and a seat on the State Council; (8) asks after the writer/illustrator Viktor Bilibin, with a gently critical remark that Petersburg bureaucratic life is turning him into a "dried-up bureaucrat" (sukhar’ chinosha); (9) remarks on the fine weather distracting him from work with sun and fishing; (10) closes with regards to Shcheglov’s wife and a wish for happiness "as Solomon in his youth"; (11) signs off.