The Party and Other Stories

What It's About

This is the fourth volume of Constance Garnett's Tales of Chekhov series, gathering eleven stories written mostly across the 1890s. The collection ranges widely: a name-day party that exposes the strain between a husband and his pregnant wife; a night ride through the steppe that becomes a meditation on fear; a wealthy woman weighing love against her factory workers' welfare; a marriage of convenience that reshapes a woman's sense of herself. Chekhov moves between country estates, provincial towns, and hospital wards, following ordinary people through moments of self-deception, longing, and quiet reckoning.

Key Concepts

Recurring threads include the gap between social appearance and private feeling, the constraints placed on women by marriage and class, and characters who drift into compromise rather than confront what they actually want. Chekhov's sympathy rarely tips into sentimentality - his irony stays close to his characters even at their most foolish or self-deceiving.

About the Author

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian physician and writer, widely regarded as one of the greatest short-story writers and dramatists in world literature. He trained and briefly practised as a doctor, a background that shaped the clinical attentiveness of his fiction.

About This Edition

This is a 1917 translation by Constance Garnett.