SEER, 93, 2, APRIL 2015 348 Peschio runs through the ‘secret societies’ of Arzamas and The Green Lamp, before concluding with an excellent account of the almost revolutionary nature of Pushkin’s ‘break-through’ work, Ruslan and Liudmila, which is in turn followed by the aforementioned Epilogue. At times Pushkin is a bit player in all this, at times he moves centre-stage; in both contexts the reader gains many important insights into the tiny but influential groups of young Russian men in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Taken together, these two works offer the specialist, the Pushkinist, but also the student of Russian literature, and of Russia, a great deal. However, I must end with a significant caveat. Taboos, pornography and the other topics covered here have long since been of keen interest to those concerned with gender, and to feminist critique in particular. It is therefore regrettable, one might even say in the parlance of the works themselves, shameful, that in the second decade of the twenty-first century these 600 pages in total are almost entirely innocent of even a scintilla of gender theory or feminist approach. School of Humanities Joe Andrew Keele University Sekirin, Peter (ed., trans.). Memories of Chekhov: Accounts of the Writer from His Family, Friends and Contemporaries. McFarland & Company, Jefferson, NC and London, 2011. vii + 215 pp. Illustrations. Appendix. Annotated bibliography. Index. $45.00 (paperback). Chekhov remains, after Shakespeare, the second-most performed playwright on the English-speaking stage; moreover, no single artist has had greater influence on the forms and methods of modern drama and the poetics of short prose than Chekhov. A measure of the enduring interest in this seminal artist are studies that present Russian language sources to English readers. In this regard Peter Sekirin’s ‘documentary biography’ joins Harvey Pitcher’s translation of Vladimir Kataev’s analyses of Chekhov’s prose, If Only We Knew (Chicago, IL, 2002), Donald Rayfield’s acclaimed Anton Chekhov: A Life (New York, 1997) and Rosamund Bartlett’s Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters (London, 2004). A third of the pagination in Sekirin’s compilation is from Chekhov in the Memoirs of His Contemporaries (Chekhov v vospominaniakh sovremennikov, Moscow, five editions between 1947 and 1986); other entries appeared in periodicals or are from the diaries, essays and letters of Chekhov’s family, friends and acquaintances. An annotated bibliography lists the more than one hundred original sources, most of which have not been previously translated. REVIEWS 349 Sekirin’s compilation succeeds in providing a diverse and balanced account of Chekhov the man from various perspectives. The memoirists reflect the rich cultural milieu and circles Chekhov frequented: they are writers and editors; singers and artists; actors, directors and impresarios; teachers, architects, and doctors. They include well-known names: Ivan Bunin, Maxim Gor´kii, Konstantin Stanislavskii, Petr Chaikovskii, Olga Knipper-Chekhov and others; most, however, are lesser-known individuals who recall their association or encounters with Chekhov. The selections are organized into six chapters — four are chronological, devoted to Chekhov’s youth in Taganrog; Moscow in the 1880s; the 1890s at Melikhovo; and the writer’s last years in Yalta until his death in 1904, aged forty-four. The other two chapters have a thematic focus — ‘Writers and Friends’ and ‘Chekhov and Theatre’. As well as an index, the book includes an appendix listing personal and professional milestones in Chekhov’s life. As keeper of the Chekhov archive, Maria Chekhov cultivated a saintly image of her brother by expunging profanity, evidence of affairs and perfunctory accounts of sexual exploits from Anton’s correspondence; the equally prudish Soviet censorship did likewise. Sekirin provides a sampling of these ‘tantalizing snippets’ (p. 72) and notes they have been restored in the recent Russian edition of Chekhov’s Complete Works in 35 Volumes (Moscow, 2008). While Chekhov was no saint, the portrait of a virtuous man nonetheless emergesfromaccountsofhiscontemporaries.MemoiristsnoteChekhov’sgood humour and patience; his polite attentiveness; his unpretentious simplicity combined with sophistication; his ascetic self-discipline and capacity for work; his humility, seeming indifference to fame and lack of professional jealously; his non-judgemental tolerance of human failings, as seen in his defence of a disagreeable loudmouth — ‘every person...