To A. S. Suvorin, 27 May 1891. Bogimovo.

Written 27 May 1891 from Bogimovo, the Kaluga province estate the Chekhov family was renting for the summer, to Aleksei Sergeyevich Suvorin, publisher of Novoye Vremya – a second letter to Suvorin of the same date, distinct in subject and evidently sent separately. Chekhov describes the Bogimovo estate’s amenities (a piano, a billiard table) as a possible summer let for the Suvorins next year, forwards and rebuts a letter from Dmitry Grigorovich that Suvorin had apparently shared, defends his own reticence about his recent trip abroad, credits himself with the germ of Suvorin’s newspaper article on open-air "hippodrome" theater, and closes with a report on fishing.

Anna Ivanovna is Suvorin’s wife. Grigorovich is Dmitry Vasilyevich Grigorovich, the elder novelist whose 1886 letter had first urged Chekhov to take his talent seriously; the passage Chekhov quotes and argues with – on a literary generation "turning away from the West" and finding Venice and Florence tedious – refers to Chekhov’s own recent journey through Italy on his return from Sakhalin. M. N. Yermolova was the leading tragedienne of the Maly Theatre in Moscow; "the Moscow Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov" is a generic/mocking name for an imagined typical Moscow theatrical conservative rather than a specific person. Burenin is Viktor Petrovich Burenin, Novoye Vremya critic and another frequent Suvorin-circle correspondent; "Shastunov" is a work (likely a play or manuscript then under discussion) that Burenin had dismissed.