Anglicised spellings have been preferred for 'britchka', 'datcha', 'icon', 'kopeck' and 'Tartar'. With the exception ofverst (two-thirds of a mile), units of measurement have been converted into British standards.
rapture Radost (1883)
p.9 'clerical officer of the founeenth grade'. The bonom rung m the
Table of Ranks instituted for the civil service by Peter the Great.
THE DEATH OF A CIVIL SERVANTSmert chmovnika (1883)
pl I 'The Chimes of Normandy'. Comic opera to music by Planquene.
AN INCIDENT AT LAwSluchay iz sudebnoy praktiki (1883)
FAT AND THIN Tolsty i tonky (1883)
p. 17 'Herostratos'. Ephesian who set fire to the temple of Diana. 'Ephialu:s'. Greek traUor at Thermopylae, 480 B.C. 'I've got my St Stanislas'.The order of St Stanislas, a standard award for government service.
THE DAUCHTER OF ALBION Doch Albiorra (1883)
p.20 'Wilka Charlesovna Tvice'. Our partial repatriation of the strictly transliterated Uilka Charlzovna Tfays. 'Uilka' is perhaps Gryabov's version of Willa, 'Charlzovna' is the patronymic meaning 'daughter of Charles', and 'Tfays' perhaps Gryabov's attempt at pronouncing Twiss or Thwaites; although the general opinion is that Chekhov coined the surname from 'twice'. p.2 I 'Bit different from England, eh?!' Now a set expression, applied scathingly to things Russian.
OYSTERS Ustritsy (I 884)
A DREADFUL NIGHT Strashnaya Noch (1884)
Horror stories, spiritualism and the paranormal were much in vogue in the Moscow of the I 880s. The words 'The end of your life is at hand' (p.26) were addressed to Chekhov himself at a seance by the spirit ofTurgenev. This was one of the very first of Chekhov's early works to be translated into English (Fugitive coffins: a weird Rus- sian tale by Anton Petrovitch (sic) Tschechoff. Translated from the Russian by Grace Eldredge. Short Stories: a magazine of select stories. New York, 1902, July, p. 50-53).
MINDS IN FERMENT (FROM THE ANNALS OF A TOWN)Brozheniye umov (lz letopisi odnogo goroda) (1884)
THE COMPLAINTS BOOK Zhalobnaya kniga (1884)
THE CHAMELEON Khameleon (1884)
THE HUNTSMAN Yeger (1885)
THE MALEFACTOR Zloumyshlennik (1885)
p.46 'a spockerel'. The Russian fish known to science as the 'asp' (Aspius aspius).
A MAN OF IDEAS Myslitel (1885)
p.50 'Or take spelling, for example.' What Yashkin objects to in Russ1an spelling concerns the redundant letter yat, which was abolished m the spelling reform of 1918. We have translated this into a roughly comparable feature of English spelling.
SERGEANT PRISHIBEYEV Unter Prishibeyev (1885)
We have not rendered this meaningful name, partly because it appears to be impossible (it manages to convey bruising, intimidat- ing, depressing and actually killing all in one word), and partly because the story is already well known in English by this title.
THE MISFORTUNE Gore (1885)
ROMANCE WITH DOUHLE BASS Roman s kontrabasom (1886)
THE WITCH Vedma (1886)
GRISHA Grisha (1886)
KIDS Detvora (1886)
REVENGE Mest (1886)
p.88 "vim'. Popular Russian card 1\ame of the whist family.
EASTER NIGHT Svyatoyu nochyu (1886)
Although Chekhov skilfully implies that the canticles quoted by leronim are the work of Nikola}' the monk, they are in fact accepted Russian Orthodox canticles (akafisty) that he would have known well from his religious upbringing. p.96 *ikos\ The part of the canticle following the first collect-hymn. It sets out the acts performed by the subject of the canticle.
THE LITTLE JOKEShutochka (1886)
THE OBJET D ART Proizvedeniye iskusstva (1886) p. 106 'No. 223 of the Stock Exchange Gazette' This No. contained an instalment of Zola's novel L'Oeuvre, which concerns a paimer who transfers his affections from his wife to his paintings of the female nude.
THE CHORUS-GIRL Khoristka (1886) DREAMS Mechty (1886) THE ORATOR Orator (1886)
p. 123 'aut mortuis nihil beiie'. Nonsense version of De mortuis aut nihil aut bene ('Of the dead speak well or not at all'}.
VANKA Vanka (1886)
VEROCHKA Vrrochka (18117)
p.lJf. 'as fony thousand others'. Common humorous expression of the time adapted from Hamlet's phrase 'forry thousand brothers' (Act V, Scene 1).
A DRAMA Drama (1887)
p. l4l. 'The Cause'. Radical literary periodical pubhshed in St Petersburg from 1866 to 1888. Medusina's play is a parody of rhe 'ideologically commnted' drama of Chckhov's day.
TYPHUS Ti( (1887)
NOTtS FROM THE JOURNAL OF A QUICK-TEMPF.RLD MAN lz Mpisok vipyl-
chivngo cheloveka (1887)
THE REED-PIPESvire/ (1887)
THE KISS Potse!uy ( 1887)
p. 171 'Plevna'. Town in northern Bulgaria (now Pleven) besieged by the Kussians in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878.
NO COMMENT Bez wglaviya (1888)
let me SLEEPSpat khochetsya (1888)
The story has become famous in English under Constance Garnett's title Slupy. This is neither very accurate, however, nor does its whimsical tone do justice to the spirit of the work. Katherine Mans- field's Tht> Child-Who-Was-Tired, published in her collection ln a German Pension (1911 ), is a creative imitation of Chekhov's story, which she appears to have read first in a German translation.
Select Bibliography
Compiled by Patrick Miles
To date at least 264 of Chckhov's early works have been translated into English. The following is a list in chronological order of anthologies containing more than one storv. In brackets is given the number of early stories the anthologv contains, with the titles of those that also feature in the present volume. Only six anthologies are currently in print.