To A. S. Suvorin, 24 July 1891. Bogimovo.

A short, chatty letter of 24 July 1891 from Bogimovo, the Kaluga province estate where the Chekhov family was summering, to Aleksei Sergeyevich Suvorin, publisher of Novoye Vremya: dateline, a one-line repeated dateline, a reply about a Crimea invitation and a story in progress, thanks for a fee increase paired with mock-bitter remarks on money, a literary aside on the French writer Edouard Rod, a note on the weather, a domestic aside about mushrooms and coffee, a one-line joke about a letter from "Lessing," two lines of gossip about literary acquaintances, closing regards, and signature.

Chekhov declines, for now, Suvorin’s invitation to Crimea, citing work on a story already half-finished that will run four to five feuilletons. He thanks Suvorin for a small raise in his per-line rate at Novoye Vremya but jokes that only an immoral windfall – marrying a rich woman, or passing off Tolstoy’s "Anna Karenina" as his own – could actually fix his finances. He then turns on the French novelist Edouard Rod, whom Suvorin had praised as a favorite of Tolstoy’s: Chekhov judges Rod’s fiction pretentious and thin, compares him to the Russian writer Grigory Machtet (only "a little cleverer"), and quotes with contempt a line from Rod’s preface renouncing naturalism for spiritualism. A few lines report fine weather and a failed hunt for mushrooms despite rain, a joking aside about a letter from "Lessing," and closes with gossip – puzzlement at what Pleshcheyev’s son is doing in Skalkovsky’s department, and a jab at whether the poet Merezhkovsky and his wife are still abroad – before sending regards to the Suvorin household and signing off.