Many of the stories in The Undiscovered Chekhov reveal Chekhov as a keen modernist. Emphasizing impressions and the juxtaposition of incongruent elements, instead of the straight narrative his readers were used to, these stories upturned many of the assumptions of storytelling of the period.
The Russian literary giants of the nineteenth century—Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky—had all come from the nobility. Chekhov was the grandson of a serf. Chekhov's father had gone bankrupt, moving with the rest of the family to Moscow, leaving sixteen-year-old Anton destitute and penniless. Three years later, Chekhov was able to secure a scholarship and joined them, immediately becoming the chief support of the family, largely by selling his stories to magazines. The stories that make up this collection are the harvest of Chekhov's young maturity—the period when he studied and then practiced medicine—which made him a literary star and led to his winning the Pushkin Prize in 1888.
Here is "Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town," written as a series of telegrams, beginning with "Have been drinking to Sarah's health all week! Enchanting! She actually dies standing up!..." In "Confession...," a thirty-nine year old bachelor recounts some of the fifteen times chance foiled his marriage plans. In "How I Came to be Lawfully Wed," a couple reminisces about the day they vowed to resist their parents' plans that they should marry. And in the more familiarly Chekhovian "Autumn" an alcoholic landowner fallen low and a peasant from his village meet far from home in a sad and haunting reunion in which the action of the story is far less important than the powerful impression it leaves with the reader that each man must live his life and has his reasons.
The November 1997 issue of Harper's included nine of the stories, breaking the news of Peter Constantine's discovery. The response was powerful and unexpected: The New York Times, the BBC and National Public Radio reported the existence of the stories as news. As the remaining 31 pieces have never been available previously in English, The Undiscovered Chekhov introduces a large number of entirely new stories to English-speaking readers.