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“... Dostoevsky in the 1840s, a caustic and iconoclastic rising star, was the subject of Joseph Frank’s first volume of biography and critique, The Seeds of Revolt. This volume stood out from many rival studies for the thoroughness of its research, the generosity of its approach (to Dostoevsky and to other critics), its intelligent judgment of Dostoevsky’s psychology and literary intentions, and, rarest quality of all in the Dostoevsky industry, for its sheer readability ...”

“... When The News seeped out that Anton Chekhov, the most sought after of Russia’s eligible bachelors, had, in Moscow on 25 May 1901, married a Lutheran actress, Olga Knipper, at least a dozen women exclaimed: ‘Why not me?’ There were the painters: Maria Drozdova dropped her brushes and her palette when she heard the news, exclaiming that she thought God had reserved Chekhov as a reward for her modesty and that she hated Knipper; Aleksandra Khotiaintseva, who had entertained him when they were staying in Nice in 1898 and whom Chekhov’s youngest brother wanted him to marry, kept her disappointment to herself ...”

“... to me more and more gloomy.’ So it probably turned out, though we have no sure way of telling. Donald Rayfield thinks that the tone of Victor’s last pages suggests impending suicide, but there is no record of him after his Confessions end. Even the publication of a frank sexual memoir – the best way, ...”

“... his writing, which is rebellious, brutal, despairing and unhappily comic, gives no excuse for it. Donald Rayfield’s biography, the fullest to appear in English, clouds the icon. Rayfield’s Chekhov is still charming, tactful and decent. He is still the man who bought new books for the library of his hometown, who ...”