Description

We recently purchased a large collection of Easton Press books to be listed in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for the chance to pick up some collectible titles. This title is featured in the Easton Press series, The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written . Published in 1977, bound in handsome Brown leather, and beautifully illustrated by Lajos Szalay, this edition would be a worthy addendum to your collectible books library. Specifics of this series from the Easton Press website: Fully and tightly bound in genuine leather. 22kt gold accents deeply inlaid on the "hubbed" spine. Heavy duty binding boards... . Superbly printed on acid-neutral paper... . Sewn pages – not just glued like ordinary books. ...moiré endpages and a satin-ribbon page marker. Gilded page ends. ************************************************************************************************************************************** " The Cherry Orchard was written by Chekhov as a comedy, but directed by Stanislavski as a tragedy on its premier. The play has maintained the dual nature of these intentions ever since. An aristocratic family return to their estate on the eve of auction. Though alternatives present themselves, the family is apathetic and their property is sold. The play addresses the vast changes to the Russian social casts at the time, and the general cultural futility experienced by the aristocracy and bourgeoisie in their shifting roles." _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "First performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901, ' The Three Sisters ' probes the lives and dreams of Olga, Masha, and Irina, former Muscovites now living in a provincial town from which they long to escape. Their hopes for a life more suited to their cultivated tastes and sensibilities provide a touching counterpoint to the relentless flow of compromising events in the real world. In this powerful play, a landmark of modern drama, Chekhov masterfully interweaves character and theme in subtle ways that make the work's climax seem as inevitable as it is deeply moving." //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and physician who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard . These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text". The plays that Chekhov wrote were not complex, but easy to follow, and created a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience. Chekhov at first wrote stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. The above text derives from, respectively, Floating Press and Dover Publications (via Google Books) and Wikipedia. [Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich. The Cherry Orchard, and Other Plays. Australia: Floating Press, 2009.] [Chekhov, Anton. The Three Sisters. United States: Dover Publications, 2012.]