Chekhov was a first-generation intellectual: his grandfather was a former serf, his father a small shopkeeper. 'There is peasant blood in me', he wrote (Letters, vol. V, p. 283). But in the history of Russian culture, the name of Chekhov has become synonymous with intelligence, good upbringing - and refinement. How did these qualities come to be acquired by a provincial boy who spent his crucial formative years up to the age of nineteen in a small Russian town? Taganrog, Chekhov's birthplace, was typical of Russian provincial towns of the time: taverns, little shops, 'not a single sign without a spelling mistake'; oil lamps, and wastelands thickly overgrown with weeds. Chekhov's memories, of his 'green' years growing up in Taganrog, are full of references to puddles and unpaved streets.