SOURCE: Introduction to Uncle Vanya, by Anton Chekhov, translated by Michael Frayn, Methuen, 1987, pp. ixxxii.

In the following, Frayn surveys the genesis and development of Uncle Vanya.

No one knows exactly when Uncle Vanya took its present form. It was most probably in 1896, between the completion of The Seagull in the spring of that year and its disastrous premiere in St. Petersburg that October. It was first produced in the following year, as the second of Chekhov's four last great plays. But in its origins it goes back to a much earlier period than any of them. It is substantially a reworking of The Wood Demon, which was conceived nearly a decade before, when Chekhov was twenty-eight, and still only just emerging as a serious writer. Its development into its final form was tortuous and painful, and it is the story of Chekhov's own development as a dramatist...