<DIV>During the last ten years of his life, Anton Chekhov penned his great plays, spent time treating the sick, and wrote a small number of stories that are considered his masterpieces. The eleven stories collected here-"The Lady with the Little Dog," "The House with the Mezzanine," "My Life," "Peasants," "A Visit to Friends," "Ionych," "About Love," "In the Ravine," "The Bishop," "The Bride," and "Disturbing the Balance"-hail from this fertile period. They reveal a writer who, in response to the techniques of Symbolism and Impressionism, moved beyond nineteenth-century realism to become an innovator of the modern short story, influencing such key twentieth-century literary figures as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.<BR><BR></DIV>