To A. S. Suvorin, 15 November 1891. Moscow.

Written from Moscow to Aleksei Sergeyevich Suvorin, the newspaper publisher and Chekhov’s closest correspondent of these years, on 15 November 1891 – the day after Chekhov had written to the poet Konstantin Mikhailovich Fofanov chasing a promised poem for the Sbornik, the famine-relief Miscellany that Russkiye Vedomosti was preparing for publication that autumn. This letter continues the same piece of literary charity work: Chekhov, again acting as an informal broker for the project, relays a request from the newspaper that Suvorin print its subscription announcement free of charge and let subscriptions be taken without deduction at his own office. He notes the Miscellany’s contents are already assembled and its table of contents "sparkles with names."

He also asks Suvorin to forward on the enclosed letter to Fofanov – the same appeal referenced in the letter of the day before – and adds two further small requests: for the addresses of the poets Aleksei Nikolayevich Apukhtin and Vasily Lvovich Velichko, and a reminder to Aleksei Alekseyevich Suvorin, the publisher’s son and an editor at Novoye Vremya, about two outstanding story proofs.

The letter is otherwise the terse business of a man still fighting off the influenza that had kept him coughing and, as he puts it, dulled since early November – barely able, he says, to write even letters. The closing note about The Duel refers to Chekhov’s own novella, then running in installments in Suvorin’s Novoye Vremya: only a little of it remained, he reports, enough to fit into two more installments.