Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born 29 January 1860 and practiced medicine while writing stories for money. As his ambition sharpened, he began making formal innovations that reshaped the modern short story, insisting a writer's job was to state problems correctly, not solve them. The Seagull flopped in 1896 and he renounced the theater, but Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre revived it to acclaim in 1898, then produced Uncle Vanya and premiered Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works - offering "theatre of mood" and "submerged life" in place of conventional action - challenged actors and audiences alike. He died 15 July 1904, leaving behind a body of work that stands with Ibsen and Strindberg at the birth of early modernism in the theater.