Attracted to Olga Knipper at Moscow Art Theatre rehearsal of The Seagull, but leaves almost immediately for Yalta. Correspondence with Gorky

Trilogy ‘Man in a Case’, ‘Gooseberries’ and ‘About Love’. ‘Ionych’. The Seagull has first performance at Moscow Art Theatre and Chekhov is established as a playwright

1899 Widespread student riots

Tolstoy’s Resurrection serialized

Chekhov has rift with Suvorin over student riots. Olga Knipper visits Melikhovo. He sells Melikhovo in June and moves with mother and sister to Yalta. Awarded Order of St Stanislav for educational work

‘Darling’, ‘New Country Villa’ and ‘On Official Duty’. Signs highly unfavourable contract with A. F. Marks for complete edition of his works. Taxing and time-consuming work of compiling first two volumes. Moderate success of Uncle Vanya at Moscow Art Theatre. Publishes one of finest stories, ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’. Completes ‘In the Ravine’. Begins serious work on Three Sisters; goes to Nice to revise last two acts

1900 Chekhov settles in the house built by him in Yalta. Actors from the Moscow Art Theatre visit Sevastopol and Yalta at his request. Low opinion of Ibsen

Sees Uncle Vanya for first time

1901 Formation of Socialist Revolutionary Party. Tolstoy excommunicated by Russian Orthodox Church

Chekhov marries Olga Knipper

Première of Three Sisters at Moscow Art Theatre, with Olga Knipper as Masha. Works on ‘The Bishop’

1902 Sipyagin, Minister of Interior, assassinated. Gorky excluded from Academy of Sciences by Nicholas II

Gorky’s The Lower Depths produced at Moscow Art Theatre Chekhov resigns from Academy of Sciences together with Korolenko in protest at exclusion of Gorky. Awarded Griboyedov Prize by Society of Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers for Three Sisters

Completes ‘The Bishop’. Begins ‘The Bride’, his last story. Begins The Cherry Orchard

1903 Completion of Trans-Siberian Railway. Massacre of Jews at Kishinev pogrom

Chekhov elected provisional president of Society of Lovers of Russian Literature

Completes ‘The Bride’ and the first draft of The Cherry Orchard. Arrives in Moscow for Art Theatre rehearsal of The Cherry Orchard; strong disagreement with Stanislavsky over its interpretation

1904 Assassination of Plehve, Minister of Interior, by Socialist revolutionaries. War with Japan

Chekhov dies of TB on 15 July at Badenweiler in the Black Forest (Germany)

Première of The Cherry Orchard at Moscow Art Theatre

Introduction

Say ‘The Shooting Party is a detective story, first published in 1885’ and most readers of Penguin Classics will adjust their sets accordingly. The publication date locates Chekhov’s novel (his first and only full-length one) plumb in the centre of the genre’s cradle – at the point at which a clever plot gimmick, plausibly invented by Edgar Allan Poe, with his The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), was growing into one of the five big categories of popular fiction (Poe, coincidentally, can take credit for a couple of the others – Gothic/Horror and SF).

Francophiles, however, claim priority in the invention of the roman policier, with François-Eugène Vidocq’s Memoirs (1828), the autobiography of a celebrated chief of the Paris secret police. Vidocq’s book laid out the ground rules of the sleuthing genre. A mysterious and sensational crime is committed which must be solved by the skilled interpretation of certain ‘clues’. The baffled reader, meanwhile, is challenged to match his or her wits with those of the criminal – or sometimes the author.