To A. S. Suvorin, 27 November 1889. Moscow.

Written 27 November 1889 from Moscow to Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin, the wealthy publisher of the newspaper "New Time" (Novoye Vremya) and Chekhov’s principal patron, publisher, and correspondent through the late 1880s and 1890s. By this date the two men had an established, familiar correspondence full of private jokes and mock-formal address, of which this letter is a typical example.

The letter opens with a business errand: the editor of the journal "Artist" (Nikolai Vasilyevich Kumanin) had asked Chekhov to relay two commercial proposals to Suvorin, whose bookshops in Petersburg, Odessa, Kharkov, and Moscow were a significant retail and distribution network. "Artist" wanted (1) to open subscription/sales branches inside Suvorin’s shops on the same terms as another periodical, "Sельский хозяин" ("The Country Gentleman" / "The Rural Householder"), including space in the Monday new-book advertisements, and (2) to buy plays and art books from Suvorin’s Moscow shop at the trade discount, in exchange for advertising Suvorin’s play and art-book stock alongside its own. Chekhov relays these requests essentially as a favor/errand, with visible comic distance from the mercantile subject matter (the "booksellers and Pharisees" discount joke).

The letter then shifts into personal register: weather in Moscow (frost, no snow); a running private joke addressing Suvorin as "Your Excellency" ("ваше превосходительство") tied to a shared memory of the Slavyansky Bazaar hotel/restaurant in Moscow, their usual meeting place, extended into a joke that even the Moscow cabmen now address Chekhov the same way; a candid, half-joking complaint about "Artist"’s disorganized management and Chekhov’s mock ambition to be offered the editorship himself; a request that Suvorin telegraph his travel date so Chekhov can meet him at the Slavyansky Bazaar; solicitous advice that Suvorin (who suffered from headaches) consult the Moscow physician Grigory Zakharyin, with a wry note that his expensive advice is worth the price; a report on having read Zakharyin’s published lectures and found them a disappointment compared to hearing him lecture live as a student ("there is a libretto, but no opera"), with a teasing aside that Chekhov could write a flattering review in "New Time" to get Suvorin a free consultation but won’t; a closing benediction; and greetings to Suvorin’s wife, Anna Ivanovna Suvorina, with whom Chekhov was also on warm terms.