Three Sisters

Anton Chekhov was born to a poor family in a small coastal Russian town and was one of six children. His loving mother and abusive father owned a struggling grocery store, and after the business failed, they moved the family to Moscow; Chekhov, who was 16 at the time, remained in their small town for two more years to complete his schooling. Chekhov rejoined his family in Moscow in 1879 and began his studies at the Moscow University Medical School. However, his father’s financial prowess was no more adept in Moscow, and Chekhov began to use writing as a side job to make money for his family. He wrote short comic pieces examining life in Russia and published them in magazines, often using a pen name. During his years in medical school, Chekhov published hundreds of short stories and gained notoriety as a popular writer. He graduated in 1884 and began practicing medicine. In the same year, he started to cough up blood: a telltale sign of the tuberculosis that would ultimately kill him. Although he saw his brother die of tuberculosis, Chekhov denied the obvious diagnosis and refused to see a doctor for his own illness until 1897.