To A. S. Suvorin, 3 December 1891. Moscow.

Written from Moscow on 3 December 1891 to Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin, publisher of "Novoye Vremya" and Chekhov’s closest correspondent and literary confidant through this period. The letter moves briskly through publishing business, a social call, reader response to The Duel, and a run of anecdotes about amateur manuscripts sent to him unsolicited, closing with money matters and a wry aside.

The letter is a single continuous piece of correspondence, one sitting, covering a run of miscellaneous business and news in Chekhov’s typical telegraphic manner are the doubled dateline (full form, then the abbreviated notation), the same convention seen elsewhere in this edition’s letter headers. concerns the proofs of Kashtanka: Chekhov has expanded the tale from 4 chapters to 7, cut a subplot involving an unfaithful wife and a family friend, and asks that the proofs be forwarded to Neupokoyev. is a one-line query about two manuscripts. describes a long visit from Prince Urusov, who talked about French writers and, Chekhov notes with some irony, suffers from an imagined case of locomotor ataxia, much as Suvorin is teased elsewhere for imagined progressive paralysis – the French phrase idee fixe appears in the source with its own parenthetical gloss, preserved here as a footnote. reports warm reader letters about The Duel arriving from around Russia, and provincial press criticism only surfacing after the third installment – a good sign for sales. asks that 100 copies of Kashtanka be sent to the Society for the Protection of Animals once it is published. is a set of comic anecdotes about unsolicited manuscripts: a young man from Voronezh with a derivative novel titled "Poor in Spirit," and a retired colonel with two manuscripts, one of which features a cab driver holding forth on Marx, Buckle, and Mill. turns to money: the publisher Gurevich failed to send an advance, prompting a matter-of-fact accounting of what she owes various people and what she owes Chekhov (about 600 rubles), plus his note that he has otherwise written enough to be financially comfortable until he leaves for the dacha. closes with a joking invocation of Allah and a jab suggesting a certain "Akaky Moskovsky" – evidently a running private joke between Chekhov and Suvorin – deserves a staff position at "Novoye Vremya." is the signature.