Donald Rayfield. Anton Chekhov: A Life. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000. xxvii, 674 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Bibliography. Index. $22.95, paper. Vera Gottlieb and Paul Allain, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chekhov. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xxxiii, 293 pp. Illustrations. Appendices. Bibliography. Indices. $54.95, cloth. $19.95, paper. Rayfield's is by no means the first biography of Chekhov in English; but it is the first to go far beyond the printed page in making extensive use of manuscript material that he documents carefully and frequently quotes. He fi...
