Dear Writer, Dear Actress: The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper

The five year friendship and marriage of the writer Anton Chekhov and the actress Olga Knipper, who created many of the central female roles in his plays, is one of the most extraordinary love stories in the history of the theatre. Because of Knipper's work at the Moscow Art Theatre and Chekhov's illness, which bound him to Yalta, their relationship flourished through a constant stream of letters between them. Temperamentally the actress and writer were at odds, and their correspondence reveals a relationship as tempestuous, teasing and spontaneous as the many relationships found in Chekhov's stories and plays. This selection is the passionate and enduring record of their love affair.