Anton Chekhov’s signed book may fetch USD 20k at auction

Boston, April 24

A book of short stories, signed by Russian author Anton Chekhov and bound in original gilt-lettered navy blue cloth, is expected to fetch USD 20,000 at an auction in the US.

The book, Povesti i Razskazy (Stories and Tales), was given by Chekhov to a friend and inspiration Semen Ilich Bychkov, according to US-based RR Auction.

Bychkov was a waiter at the Grand Hotel in Moscow where Chekhov stayed. The online auction will end on May 9.

Inscribed in ink, the message on the first free end page reads, “To Semen Ilich Bychkov, from the author, Anton Chekhov. 25 March 1897. In nice memory.”

The character Nikolai Chikildeev in the highly regarded 1897 short story ‘Peasants’ was apparently based on Bychkov, the auction house said in a statement.

The two became so close that Chekhov acted as godfather to Bychkov’s daughter.

She recalled that her father worshipped Chekhov and that he helped the playwright’s sister publish his letters and organised numerous events dedicated to Chekhov, according to RR Auction.

“I’d been a factory worker, a yard man, worked in a puppet theatre, in pantomime and done everything. Of all the people staying at the hotel only Anton Chekhov spoke to me simply, man-to-man, without pride, with none of that looking down on you,” Bychkov recalls in a book ‘Anton Chekhov: A Life’ written by Donald Rayfield. PTI