Complete and Unabridged. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860 –1904) was a Russian playwright and a master of the modern short fiction. Although primarily famed as a playwright, William Boyd emphasises that his short stories represent the greater accomplishment. Though already widely acclaimed in the Russian literary scene at the time of his death, he did not gain global recognition until after the First World War when he was introduced to the English language readership by Constance Garnett’s translation. He was greatly admired by authors such as George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield.The greatest of his plays and short stories do not entail intricacy of storyline or dramatic culminations. Without using obtrusive literary devices, he describes Russian life using an elegant and unpretentious narrative style. Today, he is regarded as the standard bearer of late 19th-century Russian realism. The stories in this collection are: The DuelExcellent PeopleMireNeighboursAt HomeExpensive LessonsThe PrincessThe Chemist's Wife