Anton Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was born in southern Russia to an abusive and bankrupted father. Chekhov published vignettes to support his family, but as his artistic skill developed, so did his topics, and his invention of stream of consciousness strongly influenced modern literature. A lifelong physician, Chekhov created four classics of theatrical literature: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. “The Murder” is the literary expression of a trip to the penal colony Sakhalin, where he interviewed convicts for a census. His final words, “It has been a long time since I drank champagne,” are literary history.
 
 

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) was born in New Zealand and educated in England. In bohemian London she became pregnant with one man’s child and married another but left the relationship unconsummated because of a lesbian affair. Recovering from a miscarriage in Bavaria, she read Chekhov and wrote her first story collection, In a German Pension. Her marriage to John Middleton Murry was fraught, though she was productive: “Miss Brill” established Mansfield as a preeminent modernist. Diagnosed with tuberculosis, she died at Gurdjieff’s Institute, after running up the stairs to show Murry how well she was.