To K. G. Foti, 3 May 1890. Tyumen.

Letter to Konstantin Georgievich Foti, 3 May 1890, from Tyumen – written in the first days of Chekhov’s overland journey across Siberia to Sakhalin (he had left Moscow on 21 April 1890 and reached Tyumen, the railhead where the journey continued by horse-drawn tarantass, in early May). it has a full formal salutation ("Милостивый государь" / "Dear Sir," followed by name and patronymic), a developed two-paragraph body in complete sentences, and a signed closing of thanks and respect – the ceremonious register of a formal acknowledgment to a civic figure, not the terse wire language of Chekhov’s telegrams elsewhere in the corpus.

Content: Chekhov thanks Foti for having expressed, in conversation with Chekhov’s uncle Mitrofan Georgievich Chekhov (a Taganrog merchant and churchwarden), the wish that Chekhov donate copies of his books to the Taganrog Municipal Library, the library of his home town. Chekhov reports that before leaving Moscow he arranged for three of his own books to be sent to the library in Foti’s name; a fourth, "Пестрые рассказы" ("Motley Tales"), is out of print and will appear in a new edition only after his return, not before early 1891. He also arranged to send a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s play "Власть тьмы" ("The Power of Darkness") bearing Tolstoy’s own signature, and states his intention to continue donating signed/inscribed books he is collecting specifically for the Taganrog library.