Chekhov

Rosamund Bartlett is a cultural historian with a background in Russian studies. She completed her doctorate at Oxford, worked for many years as an academic, and has published several books. As well as her biography of Chekhov:Scenes From a Life she is the author of Tolstoy: A Russian Life, which was longlisted for the 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize. She has also worked extensively as a translator. For Oxford World's Classics she has translated Anna Karenina (2014) and a Chekhov anthology, About Love and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Weidenfeld Prize. She is the editor and co-translator of Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters for Penguin Classics (2004). A new edition of her 2008 Chekhov anthology The Exclamation Mark and Other Stories will be published by Hesperus in September 2025. Her co-edited Anton Chekhov, Earliest Stories will be published in November 2025 with Cherry Orchard Books, an imprint of Academic Studies Press.

'Gives us a real sense of what made Chekhov tick. Dispelling many of the clichés still clinging to him, she brings to life the warmth of a man typically described as frail, gloomy and inscrutable . . . Bartlett's innovative approach underscores the remarkable range of Chekhov's life and work'