In his introduction to a selection of Chekhov’s short fiction published in 1998, the novelist Richard Ford remarked, ‘there is, of course, no typical Chekhov story, a fact that by itself should please us, and makes the pseudo-critical shorthand of “Chekhovian” essentially pointless.’ This new and much longer collection of fifty-eight freshly translated items, all dating from 1880–82 and largely unknown outside Russian collected editions, would tend to confirm Ford’s claim. It reveals the kind of material the writer was capable of producing as he struggled to make a name for himself in a market-orientated world of comic magazines that, apart from a few professional Russianists, few of today’s admirers know much about. Often attributed to the pen name ‘Antosha Chekhonte’, the pieces are extremely varied in kind: satirical squibs, tenuously romantic novellas, dramatic skits and sketches, spoofs based on newspaper features. Accompanied by useful – sometimes essential – notes, they appear here in their original form, before later authorial revision.

With hindsight it would be easy to label this as ‘apprentice work’, but that would be to miss its significance at the time. There’s relatively little baleful maundering here; instead the pieces are marked by an overall liveliness. Contemporary Russia