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

Letter to Anna Mikhailovna Evreinova, 7 November 1889, Moscow.

Evreinova (1844-1919) was the editor-publisher of the journal "Severny Vestnik" ("Northern Herald"), one of the leading "thick journals" of the period and an important outlet for Chekhov’s work in the late 1880s. She was also one of Russia’s first women to hold a doctorate in law (earned abroad, since Russian universities did not grant women law degrees). This letter is a routine business-and-social letter between author and editor.

SUMMARY: Chekhov thanks Evreinova for a payment and for her promise to introduce him to a wealthy woman ("millionairess"), joking that he doubts the fortune is real and wonders why she remains unmarried. He discusses "the play" (his own, unstaged, most likely "The Wood Demon" [Леший], which he was working on in 1889 and which had not yet reached the stage) declining to say much about it and stating his general view that unproduced plays have no value for magazine publication. He says he expects to visit Petersburg in December. He complains good-humoredly about a stream of visitors interrupting the letter and wishes he could retreat to the North Pole to escape social calls. He asks whether his brother – newly qualified as a lawyer – has visited Evreinova, and jokes that the state law exams were harder for Chekhov’s own generation. He passes on his family’s greetings and a shared memory of traveling together as far as the town/station of Ivanino. He then recommends three real scholars for Evreinova to commission articles from for the journal: Fyodor Fyodorovich Erisman (hygienist), Dmitri Kaigorodov (naturalist), and Ivan Stebut (agronomist), proposing specific concrete article topics for Erisman and drawing a contrast with "unreal philosophers and real narcotist-sociologists" whose departure from the journal he does not regret. He closes with regards to two named acquaintances (Maria Dmitrievna and Alexei Nikolaevich), a joking follow-up about the millionairess possibly owning a Crimean estate he’d like to occupy with "some little actress," and a plain sign-off.