Sandra Ventris reads Happiness by Anton Chekhov

Sandra Ventris is a professional Actress. If you wish to know more about Sandra please visit her page on this site. ANTON CHEKHOV (1860-1904) Anton Chekhov Born on January 29, 1860, one of Russia's most cherished storytellers. Chekhov began writing short stories during his days as a medical student at the University of Moscow. After graduating in 1884 with a degree in medicine, he began to freelance as a journalist and writer of comic sketches. Early in his career, he mastered the form of the one-act and produced several masterpieces of this genre including The Bear (1888) in which a creditor hounds a young widow, but becomes so impressed when she agrees to fight a duel with him, that he proposes marriage, and The Wedding (1889) in which a bridegroom's plans to have a general attend his wedding ceremony backfire when the general turns out to be a retired naval captain "of  the second rank. Ivanov (1887), Chekhov's first full-length play, a fairly immature work compared to his later plays, examines the suicide of a young man very similar to Chekhov himself in many ways. His next play, The Wood Demon (1888) was also fairly unsuccessful. In fact, it was not until the Moscow Art Theater production of The Seagull (1897) that Chekhov enjoyed his first overwhelming success. Podsafe Music: Intro Music by Media Justin and Magdalena O'Neill: www.podsafeaudio.comwww.peopletalk.org