The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories is a collection of six short stories and a novella, most written between 1890 and 1898. The title story is also known as “An Artist’s Story”, in which a landscape painter clashes with a strong-willed young teacher dedicated to improving the lives of the locals. The painter falls in love with the teacher’s younger sister, who is immediately spirited far away when she discloses the happy news to her sister. “The Lady with the Toy Dog”, describes an affair between an unhappily married Moscow banker and a young married woman that begins while each is vacationing alone at the resort of Yalta on the Black Sea and grows into a deep and surprisingly enduring love. In “Gooseberries” a veterinary surgeon narrates his puzzlement at the choice made by his brother to abandon a career as an official at the Exchequer Court and buy a farm to re-live the happiness they had experienced as children, symbolized by gooseberries, which he plants and partakes of at every chance.  “My Life: The Story of a Provincial” is the story of a young nobleman who declines to pursue the occupations expected of one of his class and instead makes his living doing manual labor.  His father, an architect not averse to taking bribes, is ashamed of him and berates him.  Chekhov is in peak form throughout, showing his sly humor and his understanding of human character with the clear, precise prose of a realist who prefers to show things as they are and leave it at that.

Download a PDF datasheet