To A. S. Suvorin, 20 December 1889. Moscow.

1 Letter to Alexei Suvorin, written around December 20, 1889, from Moscow. Suvorin (1834–1912) was Chekhov’s publisher, editor of the influential Petersburg newspaper Novoye Vremya (New Time), and Chekhov’s closest correspondent through the late 1880s and 1890s; the two exchanged letters of unusual candor on literature, family, and private life. The opening of this letter is lost – the source text itself carries an editorial bracket noting "the beginning of the letter has not survived" – so begins mid-sentence, in the middle of a list of Chekhov’s own output.

2 this is a private, self-lacerating letter written shortly before Chekhov’s thirtieth birthday (he was born January 17/29, 1860, so he turns 30 in January 1890). Chekhov surveys his own body of work – occasional pieces, vaudevilles, "tedious stories" – and judges almost none of it to have serious literary value, contrasting "forced labor" with real, patient work. He reacts to reading a story by "Bezhetsky" (pen name of Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin’s – see entity note below) with a self-pitying recognition of his own condition. He fantasizes about withdrawing from literary life for five years to retrain himself from scratch, cutting his income drastically (700–900 rubles/year vs. his current 3–4 thousand) to buy himself that freedom, then admits his "khokhol" (Ukrainian/Little Russian) laziness outweighs his courage to actually do it. He mentions selling the play "The Wood Demon" (Leshy) to the publisher/theater figure Abramova, second-guesses the sale, and grumbles generally about the degeneracy of "young people nowadays." He reports his family’s health has improved and that his own cough has stopped; he plans to visit Suvorin in early January. Brief remarks on the mild winter follow, then his birthday (turning 30 while feeling 22), a wish that Suvorin and his wife Anna Ivanovna stay well, and a closing question about coming to Petersburg for New Year’s, before the signature.