Anton Chekhov's representations of children have generally remained on the periphery of scholarly attention. Yet his stories about children, which focus on communication and the emergence of personhood, also illuminate the process by which the author forged his own language of expression and occupy a uniquely important place within his work.
Chekhov's Children explores these stories – dating from Chekhov's early writings in the 1880s – as a distinct body of work unified by the theme of maturation and by the creation of a literary model of childhood. Nadya Peterson describes the evolution of Chekhov's model and its connection with the prevalent views on children in the literature, education, medicine, and psychology of his time. As with his later writing, Chekhov's portrayals of young protagonists exhibit complexity, diversity, and a broad reach across the writer's cultural and literary landscape, dealing with such themes as the distinctiveness of a child's perspective, the relationship between the worlds of children and adults, the nature of child development, socialization, gender differences, and sexuality. While reconstructing a particular literary model of childhood, this book brings to light a body of discourse on children, childhood development, and education prominent in Russia in the late nineteenth century.
Chekhov's Children accords this topic the significance it deserves by placing Chekhov's model of childhood within the broad context of his time and reassessing established notions about the child's place in the author's oeuvre.

Nadya L. Peterson is associate professor of Russian at Hunter College, CUNY, and is on the faculty of the doctoral program in comparative literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Nadya L. Peterson's profile page

“Nadya L. Peterson’s book is a unique and welcome addition to Chekhov scholarship. Firmly anchored in theories of child-rearing and pedagogy which emerged during the nineteenth century, Peterson’s study provides the first full-length analysis of Chekhov’s child characters. In so doing, she also exposes the nuanced role human development plays in Chekhov’s art as a whole.” Modern Language Review

"This pioneering and engaging study contributes to Chekhov studies, childhood studies, the study of late imperial Russia, but its most innovative dimension lies in bringing together literary and childhood studies in a methodologically interesting way, constructing an original model that deserves to be taken up, developed, and refined in other cases for the future." Andy Byford, Durham University and author of Science of the Child in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia