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Short Fiction ▾
contents
  1. A Living Chattel
  2. Joy
  3. At the Barber’s
  4. An Enigmatic Nature
  5. A Classical Student
  6. The Death of a Government Clerk
  7. A Daughter of Albion
  8. The Trousseau
  9. An Inquiry
  10. Fat and Thin
  11. A Tragic Actor
  12. A Slander
  13. The Bird Market
  14. Choristers
  15. The Album
  16. Minds in Ferment
  17. A Chameleon
  18. In the Graveyard
  19. Oysters
  20. The Swedish Match
  21. The Marshal’s Widow
  22. Small Fry
  23. In an Hotel
  24. Boots
  25. Nerves
  26. A Country Cottage
  27. Malingerers
  28. The Fish
  29. Gone Astray
  30. The Huntsman
  31. A Malefactor
  32. A Dead Body
  33. The Cook’s Wedding
  34. In a Strange Land
  35. Overdoing It
  36. Old Age
  37. Sorrow
  38. Oh! The Public
  39. Mari d’Elle
  40. The Looking-Glass
  41. Art
  42. A Blunder
  43. Children
  44. Misery
  45. An Actor’s End
  46. The Requiem
  47. Anyuta
  48. Ivan Matveyitch
  49. The Witch
  50. A Story Without an End
  51. A Joke
  52. Agafya
  53. A Nightmare
  54. Grisha
  55. Love
  56. Easter Eve
  57. Ladies
  58. Strong Impressions
  59. A Gentleman Friend
  60. A Happy Man
  61. The Privy Councillor
  62. A Day in the Country
  63. At a Summer Villa
  64. Panic Fears
  65. The Chemist’s Wife
  66. Not Wanted
  67. The Chorus Girl
  68. The Schoolmaster
  69. A Troublesome Visitor
  70. A Misfortune
  71. A Pink Stocking
  72. Martyrs
  73. The First-Class Passenger
  74. Talent
  75. The Dependents
  76. The Jeune Premier
  77. In the Dark
  78. A Trivial Incident
  79. A Tripping Tongue
  80. A Trifle from Life
  81. Difficult People
  82. In the Court
  83. A Peculiar Man
  84. Mire
  85. Dreams
  86. Hush!
  87. Excellent People
  88. An Incident
  89. The Orator
  90. A Work of Art
  91. Who Was to Blame?
  92. On the Road
  93. Vanka
  94. Champagne
  95. Frost
  96. The Beggar
  97. Enemies
  98. Darkness
  99. Polinka
  100. Drunk
  101. An Inadvertence
  102. Verotchka
  103. Shrove Tuesday
  104. A Defenceless Creature
  105. A Bad Business
  106. Home
  107. The Lottery Ticket
  108. Too Early!
  109. Typhus
  110. In Passion Week
  111. A Mystery
  112. The Cossack
  113. The Letter
  114. An Adventure
  115. The Examining Magistrate
  116. Aborigines
  117. Happiness
  118. Bad Weather
  119. A Play
  120. A Transgression
  121. From the Diary of a Violent-Tempered Man
  122. Uprooted
  123. A Father
  124. A Happy Ending
  125. In the Coach-House
  126. Zinotchka
  127. The Doctor
  128. The Pipe
  129. An Avenger
  130. The Post
  131. The Runaway
  132. A Problem
  133. The Old House
  134. The Cattle-Dealers
  135. Expensive Lessons
  136. The Lion and the Sun
  137. In Trouble
  138. The Kiss
  139. Boys
  140. Kashtanka
  141. A Lady’s Story
  142. A Story Without a Title
  143. Sleepy
  144. The Steppe
  145. Lights
  146. The Beauties
  147. The Party
  148. The Shoemaker and the Devil
  149. The Bet
  150. The Princess
  151. A Dreary Story
  152. The Teacher of Literature
  153. A Nervous Breakdown
  154. The Horse-Stealers
  155. Gusev
  156. Peasant Wives
  157. The Wife
  158. The Grasshopper
  159. After the Theatre
  160. In Exile
  161. Terror
  162. Neighbours
  163. Ward No. 6
  164. The Two Volodyas
  165. Rothschild’s Fiddle
  166. The Student
  167. At a Country House
  168. The Head-Gardener’s Story
  169. A Woman’s Kingdom
  170. Anna on the Neck
  171. Whitebrow
  172. Ariadne
  173. The Helpmate
  174. The Murder
  175. Three Years
  176. An Artist’s Story
  177. My Life
  178. Peasants
  179. The Petchenyeg
  180. At Home
  181. The Schoolmistress
  182. The Man in a Case
  183. Gooseberries
  184. About Love
  185. The Darling
  186. The New Villa
  187. On Official Duty
  188. The Lady with the Dog
  189. At Christmas Time
  190. In the Ravine
  191. The Bishop
  192. Betrothed
  193. Endnotes
English ▾

Short Fiction

Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett

free · 798,947 words · ~53 h read

text from Standard Ebooks

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A Living Chattel

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More by Anton Chekhov

  • The Cherry Orchard
    You spend time with the tender, maddening Ranevskaya and the newly wealthy Lopakhin, as everyone talks around the fate of the estate and avoids the decisions that might save it. It’s quietly funny and deeply sad, with the strange feeling of hearing laughter in a house already beginning to empty.
  • The Duel
    You spend most of it wanting to shake Laevsky, this lazy, self-excusing man rotting in a Black Sea town, while von Koren coldly argues he'd be better off dead. Then Chekhov quietly turns it, and you come out gentler about people, including yourself.
  • The Seagull
    You watch Konstantin’s wounded ambition, Nina’s hunger for the stage, and Arkadina’s brittle charm collide around a disastrous play and a country estate. It’s funny in the way awkward people can be funny, then quietly painful, especially if you like drama that lets everyone misunderstand one another in painfully recognizable ways.

appears in

  • Masters of the Short Story
  • Russian Masters

—

thank you for reading

Short Fiction by Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett. The text is in the US public domain, from the Standard Ebooks edition. Served from our own copy; read on their site for the full edition with images and typography.

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