Literature Network » Anton Chekhov

TITLE DEED HOW DID CELEBRATED BOOKS GET THEIR NAMES? Continuing our series, we look at the story behind Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20050501
Author:GARY DEXTER

THE THREE sisters in the play are Olga, Masha and Irina. The real three sisters were Zinaida, Yelena and Natasha. They were the three daughters of a widow, Madame Lintvaryova, who owned a ramshackle estate near the Ukrainian village of Luka, where Chekhov stayed in 1888. Chekhov was delighted by the clever, unmarried women, and they in turn were charmed by the tall young Muscovite. He later mined the experience for all it was worth, using it in endless stories of imprisoned, unfulfilled women in boarded-up dachas, and culminating in the play Three Sisters (1900). The sisters' constant longing ...

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