To A. M. Yevreinova, 7 September 1889. Moscow.

A short business letter to Anna Mikhailovna Evreinova, publisher and editor of the journal "Severny Vestnik" (The Northern Herald), written from Moscow on 7 September 1889. Evreinova had cabled Chekhov, apparently pressing him for the manuscript of a story he had promised her; this letter is his reply, written the same day. The piece under discussion, though unnamed here, is "A Dreary Story" ("Skuchnaya istoriya"), described by its working premise – "the life of an old professor, a privy councillor" – which Chekhov was in fact revising heavily that autumn; it appeared in the November 1889 number of Severny Vestnik, having ultimately not needed to be split across two issues as he proposes here as a fallback.

The letter shows Chekhov mid-revision and anxious about the piece: he describes having "hacked it about" and cut the middle and ending, resulting in a text he considers unfinished. He offers, reluctantly, to split the story into two halves for the October and November issues if that would help the magazine, but clearly prefers not to. He also predicts, accurately as it turned out, that the story would "make a stir" and that the rival journal "Russkaya Mysl" (Russian Thought) would attack it. The letter closes with an apology for the trouble caused, greetings to two people in Evreinova’s circle, and a note that "my family" (i.e., the Chekhov household) thanks her for a greeting sent in her telegram.