Swedish Match. Humorous Stories
29.99 €
Out of stock
Swedish Match. Humorous Stories
29.99 €
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is known all over the world as a talented playwright, his stage plays invariably gather full halls in various countries of the world. However, his writing began with feuilletons and short stories. At that time, Chekhov, the grandson of a serf peasant and future classic of world literature, became known to the reading public as Antosha Chekhonte. He began to write while still at Taganrog Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1879. In the same year Chekhov left his native Taganrog and became a student of the medical faculty at Moscow University. At the end of the same year, 1879, Chekhov made his writing debut. In the following years, the number of his small literary masterpieces grew to several hundred. According to the writer himself in those days he sometimes wrote a story a day. And although a whole epoch in which the heroes of young Chekhov live and act has passed into the past, there is hardly a person these days who will be indifferent to these funny miniatures. They invariably raise a smile. Chekhov's stories in this collection are illustrated with drawings by the Czech artist Frantisek Zhenishek. He was a talented draughtsman; in any of his drawings one can immediately notice a confident line, a masterful rendering of light and shade, and faithfully captured images of characters, which coincide perfectly with Chekhov's texts. As it often happened with other gifted artists, Frantisek's inclination to drawing woke up early, in childhood. The future artist was born at the end of May 1849 in the family of a Prague merchant. His parents paid attention to the boy's funny sketches and spared no expense, making him a pupil of the famous founder of the Czech historical school of painting, Karel Javurek. His lessons went well, and when František was only fourteen, he was able to enter the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where his main mentor was the director of this venerable institution, the famous portraitist Eduard von Engert. Under the influence of this maestro, Ženišek became interested not only in easel painting, but also in wall paintings. For a year, from 1903 to 1904, he was rector of the Academy that had educated him. Illustrating books was not the main direction of his work, but the ardent love for Chekhov's prose prompted Zhenishek to work on illustrations for his stories. They are accurate in detail, perfectly convey both Chekhov's time and the very spirit of the humorous works of "Antosha Chekhonte". The collection includes sixty-one humorous stories by Anton Chekhov, including such famous works as "Albion's Daughter", "The Intruder", "Thick and Thin", "The Dachniki" and "The Swedish Match". All works are illustrated with drawings by the talented Czech artist František Ženišek, who lived and worked at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
See also:
- All books by the publisher
- All books by the author
- All books in the series Library of World Literature