Lot 29A email save

CHEKHOV, Anton (1860-1904). Povesty i razskazy [St

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Moscow: E. F. Tsipelson, 1894. 287 pp. 8vo (190 x 130 mm). Publisher's navy blue cloth, spine and front board lettered in gilt and decoratively stamped in black, rear board blind stamped in floral motif. Condition: slight rubbing to spine edges and extremties, corners bumped, dampstain at lower left on front; neat repairs at gutters to pp. 279-282. Provenance: Semen Ilich Bychkov. EXCEPTIONAL SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY OF AN IMPORTANT COLLECTION OF CHEKHOV'S SHORT STORIES. Bychkov worked as a waiter at the Grand Hotel in Moscow where Chekhov stayed. "I'd been a factory worker, a yard man, worked in a puppet theatre, in pantomime and done everything," Bychkov recalled. "Of all the people staying at the hotel only Anton Chekhov spoke to me simply, man-to-man, without pride, with none of that looking down on you. And he gave me his writings, I started reading and at that minute a new light illuminated me.I loved him fervently with all my soul" (Rayfield p. 391). Bychkov asked the writer to be godfather to his child and the writer accepted. Chekhov warmly inscribed this copy in fond memory to Bychkov on March 25, 1897. The collection contains several of the author's best known short stories: "Babe tsarstvo" ["A Woman's Kingdom"], "Poprygunya" ["The Grasshopper"], "Chernyi monakh" ["The Black Monk"], "V ssylke" ["In Exile"], "Skripa Rotshilda" ["Rothschild's Fiddle"] and "Student" ["The Student"]. See Literaturnoe nasledstvo: Chekhov p. 268.

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