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Uncle Vanya ▾
contents
  1. Characters in the Play
  2. Act I
  3. Act II
  4. Act III
  5. Act IV
English ▾

Uncle Vanya

Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett

free · 17,018 words · ~1 h read · first published 1897

text from Standard Ebooks

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Characters in the Play

  • Alexandr Valdimirovitch Serebryakov (a retired Professor)

  • Yelena Andreyevna (his wife, aged 27)

  • Sofya Alexandrovna (Sonya) (his daughter by his first wife)

  • Marya Vassilyevna Voynitsky (widow of a Privy Councillor and mother of Professor’s first wife)

  • Ivan Petrovitch Voynitsky (her son)

  • Mihail Lvovitch Astrov (a Doctor)

  • Ilya Ilyitch Telyegin (a Landowner reduced to poverty)

  • Marina (an old Nurse)

  • A Labourer

The action takes place on Serebryakov’s estate.

Act I

Garden. Part of the house can be seen with the verandah. In the avenue under an old poplar there is a table set for tea. Garden seats and chairs; on one of the seats lies a guitar. Not far from the table there is a swing. Between two and three o’clock on a cloudy afternoon.

restoring your place…

fetching the rest…

More by Anton Chekhov

  • Short Fiction
    Nothing much happens and somehow everything does. A woman with a little dog at a seaside resort, a man realizing his life went wrong over gooseberries.
  • 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.

appears in

  • Great Books of the Western World

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thank you for reading

Uncle Vanya 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.

First published in 1897.

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