Beschreibung:

CHEKHOV, Anton (1860-1904). Rasskazy . [Stories]. St Petersburg: A. Survorin, 1888. [Bound after:] V Sumerkakh. [At Dusk]. St Petersburg: A. Suvorin, 1887. First edition, presentation copy, of this collection of stories: a unique and suggestive copy by virtue of its association. The person for whom Chekhov professes ‘love and devotion’ was the poet Aleksei Nikolaevich Pleshcheev, once a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, author of well-known poems set to music by Tchaikovskii and Rachmaninov among others. In the year of publication of these Stories , the two writers had exchanged correspondence on the very subject of Chekhov’s story-writing: having been encouraged by Pleshcheev to set aside short pieces or to select better journals as their outlet regardless of remuneration, and to concentrate on the production of what would be Chekhov’s first (and artistically defining) long story ‘The Steppe’ for the journal The Northern Messenger, Chekhov wrote back lamenting the difficulties peculiar to the composition of long pieces, which were, disastrously from the point of view of his economic necessities, claiming his whole attention. Pleshchecheev responded with words of heartfelt appreciation for the artistic worth of Chekhov’s stories. Such sentiments, and the opening of Chekhov’s response (‘My dear, dear Aleksei Nikolaevich…’) provide the literary and personal context of this inscribed gift of Stories . Rasskazy is bound after the first edition of V Sumerkakh (At Dusk), the collection of short stories which earned Chekhov the Pushkin Prize for literature. Stories : Not in Kilgour. At Dusk : Kilgour 228; Smirnov-Sokol'skii, Moia biblioteka , 1227. Octavo (173 x 112mm). (Occasional marginal dampstain, some soiling and spotting, a few leaves repaired in the inside margin; tear in leaf 17.8, final blank chipped.) Contemporary red cloth, spine titled in blind, sides with a border blocked in blind (rebacked preserving the original spine, corners repaired, some soiling). Provenance : Aleksei Nikolaevich Pleshcheev (presentation inscription by Chekhov).