The Complete Stories of Anton Chekhov, Vol. 1

1882–1885

By: Anton Chekhov

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

A Russian author, playwright, and physician, Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov’s stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number. Raymond Carver once said, “It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote—for few, if any, writers have ever done more—it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish.”

In The Complete Stories of Anton Chekhov, Volume 1: 1882–1885, Blackstone has compiled forty-one of Chekhov’s delightful short stories: "A Living Chattel", "Joy", "At the Barber’s", "An Enigmatic Nature", "A Classical Student", "The Death of a Government Clerk", "The Trousseau", "A Daughter of Albion", "An Inquiry", "Fat and Thin", "A Tragic Actor", "The Bird Market", "A Slander", "The Swedish Match", "Choristers", "The Album", "Minds in Ferment", "A Chameleon", "In the Graveyard", "Oysters", "The Marshal’s Widow", "Small Fry", "In an Hotel", "Boots", "Nerves", "A Country Cottage", "Malingerers", "The Fish", "Gone Astray", "The Huntsman", "A Malefactor", "The Head of the Family", "A Dead Body", "The Cook’s Wedding", "In a Strange Land", "Overdoing It", "Old Age", "Sorrow", "Oh! The Public!", "Mari d’Elle", and "The Looking-Glass".

Public Domain (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote…it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces.” (Raymond Carver)

Classic Tales

Chekhov's short stories are masterpieces of descriptive literature - little mental paintings of images from another time but with eternal impact.

An entire world tumbles out through these stories

The stories might have been written a long time ago but sometimes it is difficult to remember it because there is nothing old in the way the characters act, in what they feel or tell.
The perfomance helps to give body to the various figures that populate the stories.

Meh

Living chattel is best story, others mostly just strange. Lots of editing errors from the beginning, armitage version definitely best.

Wonderful classics about Russia

Pre-revolution Russia. Stories about peasants and small gentry. I love them, but then, I loved reading Tolstoy's short stories in elementary school. English translation, of course.) Reader is good, too. His personification of whining peasantry is wonderfully irritating.

Old Fashioned

These stories of bourgeois life in 19th century Russia are quaint but tedious in quantity. The performance is melodramatic. I was reminded of old fashioned radio dramas.