Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in 1860 in Taganrog, a

port in southern Russia. His father was a former serf. In 1879, after

receiving a classical education at the Taganrog Gymnasium, he

moved to Moscow to study medicine. During his university years he

helped support his family by writing stories and sketches for

humorous magazines. By 1888 he was contributing to Russia's most

prestigious literary journals and regarded as a major writer. He also

started writing plays: his first full-length play, Ivanov, was produced

in 1887. After undertaking a journey to visit the penal colony on the

Siberian island of Sakhalin in 1890, he settled on a country estate

outside Moscow, where he continued to write and practise medicine.

His failing health forced him to move to Yalta in 1898, where he

wrote his most famous short story, 'The Lady with the Little Dog'

(1899), and two of his best-known plays: Three Sisters (1901) and

The Cherry Orchard (1904), written with Stanislavsky's Moscow Art

Theatre in mind. In 1901 he married the company's leading actress,

Olga Knipper. He died from tuberculosis in Badenweiler, Germany,

in July 1904 at the age of 44.