The Bear

Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, southern Russia, on January 29, 1860, the son of a merchant. His family moved to Moscow in 1876 due to his father's bankruptcy, but Anton remained in his hometown to finish high school. Thus, it was only three years later that he joined his family in Moscow, where he enrolled in medical school. To help his family financially, Chekhov does small journalistic work and his first literary attempts. He finished his medical studies in 1884 and began to practice in the outskirts of Moscow.
His first narrative was published in a humorous newspaper in 1880, triggering an intense collaboration between Anton and several publications. His first dramatic texts date from the late 1880s ("Ivanov").
In 1892 he bought a house in the countryside in Mélikhovo, where he moved with his family. Three years later he visited Tolstoy, whose ideas would exert a strong influence and a great fascination on Chekhov.
Due to illness, he moved to Yalta, in Crimee. It was at the end of his life that he wrote the three plays that consecrated him as a great playwright: "The Seagull" in 1896, "The Three Sisters" in 1900 and "The Cherry Grove" in 1903. In 1904 he left for Germany with the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had married in 1901, dying in July in Badenweiler, in the Black Forest. Today he is recognized as one of the greatest Russian writers.