Ward No. 6 and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Ward No. 6 and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Ward No. 6 and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Ward No. 6 and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

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Overview

Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
  • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
  • Biographies of the authors
  • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
  • Footnotes and endnotes
  • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
  • Comments by other famous authors
  • Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations
  • Bibliographies for further reading
  • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.
 
Anton Chekhov invented the modern short story. With writing that is concise, realistic, and evocative, he became a sort of photographer in words, less interested in plot than in the subtleties of mood and atmosphere, and the telling detail. His characters, always vividly drawn, come from all walks of life and often seem to be caught up in a world they don’t quite understand.

Early in his brief literary career, Chekhov outlined in a letter to his brother his idea of the ingredients of a good short story. Arguing against moral judgments and political, economic, or social commentary, he wrote, “To describe . . . you need . . . to free yourself from the personal expression. . . . Subjectivity is a terrible thing.” Instead, he favored objectivity, truthfulness, originality, compassion, and brevity. Although his writing developed and matured, he remained largely faithful to these principles.

This new selection of twenty-three stories explores the entire range of Chekhov’s short fiction, from early sketches, such as “The Cook’s Wedding” (1885) and “On the Road” (1886) to late works, such as “In the Ravine” (1900) and “The Bishop" (1902). Ward No. 6 and Other Stories includes some of his most popular tales, such as the title story and “The Lady with the Dog” (1899), as well as several lesser-known works, no less masterful in their composition.

David Plante is a Professor of Writing at Columbia University. He is the author of many novels, including The Ghost of Henry James, The Family (nominated for the National Book Award), and The Woods. He has been a contributor to The New Yorker, Esquire, and Vogue, and a reviewer and features writer for the New York Times Book Review.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781593080037
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Publication date: 07/01/2003
Series: Oz Series
Pages: 400
Sales rank: 116,997
Product dimensions: 5.18(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

About The Author

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian author of plays and short stories. Although Chekhov became a physician and once considered medicine his primary career, he gained fame and esteem through writing, ultimately producing a number of well-known plays, including The Seagull and Uncle Vanya, and a large body of innovative short stories that influenced the evolution of the form.

Read an Excerpt

From David Plantes Introduction to Ward No. 6 and Other Stories

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in 1860, and from his earliest childhood his father was, I believe, the greatest influence on him as a man and as a writer. As brutal as his father was, he was not stupid, and he insisted on the education of his children, assuming as a matter of course that his sons would somehow go on to university. And, dogmatic in his religious beliefs, he had a substantial collection of religious books that indicate his faith was informed by study. But Pavel Egorovich had bad luck. Circumstances beyond his control-a newly built railroad shifted the entire economy of the town to his drastic disadvantage-led to his having to close the grocery shop and to his escaping to Moscow, where his two elder sons were already studying, to avoid debtors prison. There, he was only able to find work as a clerk in a warehouse (how interesting that Laptev in "Three Years" remembers working in a warehouse!), and his will was broken. It was at this point that his son Anton took over the responsibility of the family.

Anton was sixteen, the same age as his father when he was freed from being a serf. Still a student in Tanganrog, he sold family furniture to pay for the fare of his mother and a younger brother and sister to Moscow, and, though not a very brilliant student himself, he tutored other students to earn money to send to his family. He seemed, too, to take on the moral as well as the financial guidance of his family.

From Taganrog, he wrote to his younger brother Mishka, rather condescendingly: "You write well, and in the whole letter I have not found a single mistake in spelling," then, with moral authority, he lectured: "But there is one thing I do not like: why do you call yourself your worthless and insignificant brother? . . . Recognize it before God; perhaps, too, in the presence of beauty, wisdom, nature, but not before men. Among men you must be conscious of your dignity and worth" (Letters on the Short Story, p. 291).

Later, when he was himself living with his family in Moscow in a half basement apartment and attending the faculty of medicine at the University, he continued to help support the family: He added to the insufficient earnings of his father by writing what he called "stories, tales, vaudevilles, any sort of rubbish" (Life and Letters, p. 4) for periodicals. He had been introduced to editors by his older brother Alexander, who himself wrote for the periodicals, but Alexander and the next older brother Nikolai, a painter, had already taken to the drink that destroyed them.

If, in becoming the financial and moral force of the family, Anton had taken on the tenacity of his fathers will, he also became essentially different from him-in reaction, Im tempted to say, to free himself from his fathers dogmatic will. Anton had developed into a light-spirited, witty fellow who amused others with "all sorts of pranks and inventions" (Life and Letters, p. 3); he had become liberal; and he no longer believed in the religion that had been inculcated in him. And, unlike his father, Anton never imposed his will on anyone.

In a sense, his was a negative will, for, absolute as it was, it kept him from imposing himself not only on others but on the characters of his fiction-he refused, in the name of what he believed to be absolute freedom from tyranny, to judge. He was as strict as his father was, though not in insisting on a dominating ideology; on the contrary, he insisted on freedom from any such ideology.

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