Chekhov

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Anton Chekhov. Born in 1860, Chekhov trained as a doctor and for most of his adult life divided his time between medicine and writing. Best known for plays including The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters, he is also celebrated today as one of the greatest of short story writers. His works are often powerful character studies and chronicle the changing nature of Russian society in the late nineteenth century.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Catriona Kelly 3 episodes
  Professor of Russian at the University of Oxford
• Cynthia Marsh No other episodes
  Emeritus Professor of Russian Drama and Literature at the University of Nottingham
• Rosamund Bartlett No other episodes
  Founding Director of the Anton Chekhov Foundation and former Reader in Russian at the University of Durham

Reading list

• Chekhov: Scenes from a Life
  Rosamund Bartlett (Free Press, 2005) Google Books →
• A Life in Letters
  Anton Chekhov (trans. Rosamund Bartlett and Anthony Phillips) (Penguin Classics, 2004) Google Books →
• About Love and Other Stories
  Anton Chekhov (trans. Rosamund Bartlett) (Oxford World's Classics, 2008) Google Books →
• Plays
  Anton Chekhov (trans. Peter Carson) (Penguin Classics, 2002) Google Books →
• Chekhov Plays
  Anton Chekhov (trans. Michael Frayn) (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 1988) Google Books →
• Chekhov: The Essential Plays
  Michael Henry Heim (The Modern Library, 2003)
• A New Life of Chekhov
  Ronald Hingley (Oxford University Press, 1976) Google Books →
• If Only We Could Know!: An Interpretation of Chekhov
  Vladimir Kataev (trans. Harvey Pitcher) (Ivan R Dee, 2003) Google Books →
• The Cambridge Introduction to Chekhov
  J. Loehlin (Cambridge University Press, 2010) Google Books →
• Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey
  Janet Malcolm (Granta, 2004) Google Books →
• Brief Lives: Anton Chekhov
  Patrick Miles (Hesperus Press, 2008)
• Responding to Chekhov: The Journey of a Lifetime
  H. Pitcher (Swallow House Books, 2010) Google Books →
• Anton Chekhov: A Life
  Donald Rayfield (North Western University Press, 2000) Google Books →
• The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of Plays in Performance
  Laurence Senelick (Cambridge University Press, 1997) Google Books →
• File on Chekhov
  Nick Worrall (Methuen, 1986) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b01r5qc1

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r5qc1

Auto-category: 891.7 (Russian literature and drama)