Anton Chekhov - Two Plays: The Cherry Orchard & Three Sisters - 1977

Anton Chekhov – Two Plays – Easton Press – 1977 - 100 Greatest Books Ever Written Series

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was born in Taganrog in southwestern Russia, the grandson of a serf. He trained as a physician and practised medicine while writing prolifically for newspapers and journals, but it is his four major plays and his short stories that established his place in literary history. He died of tuberculosis at forty-four, leaving a body of dramatic work that transformed the form. Where his predecessors relied on plot and confrontation, Chekhov built his plays from atmosphere, omission, and the weight of what his characters cannot say.

This volume contains two of the four late plays: The Cherry Orchard, first produced in Moscow in 1904 in the year of Chekhov's death, and Three Sisters, which had its premiere at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901. Both plays turn on the experience of a declining class unable to act on what it understands about itself — the Ranevsky family facing the loss of their estate in the first, three provincial sisters longing without hope for Moscow in the second. The translations follow the versions first published in English in the early twentieth century, rendered by George Calderon and Constance Garnett respectively.

The introduction is by John Gielgud, the actor who was among the most prominent interpreters of Chekhov in the English-speaking theatre. The illustrations throughout are by Lajos Szalay, whose loose, expressive figures in colour appear alongside the text of each play.

Full genuine leather binding in terracotta red
Front cover with gold-stamped central floral medallion and scrollwork corner ornaments within a single border frame
Spine with raised bands, gold-stamped floral motifs, and gold lettering
Gilt page edges
Silk ribbon marker
Frontispiece portrait of Anton Chekhov, specially commissioned for this edition
Printed and bound in the United States of America

Condition is As New.

Ships from Germany. Carefully packed in cardboard book mailer with protective wrapping.