ABSTRACT
James, the critic, analysing and admiring Turgenev's art, guides the reader in their search for the Russian influence on James, the novelist. R. L. Stevenson was deeply impressed by Crime and Punishment at the time he wrote his well-known short story, Markheim. Any short piece of fiction that did not fit into the definition might be interesting reading, but was not a short story. Virginia Woolf and Somerset Maugham, in their different ways, have drawn fine distinctions between Russian and other short story forms. The Chekhov play is a literary influence, and only a part of the far wider influence of the Russian theatre, on acting, direction, staging and organization. It is not surprising that both Paul Green's House of Connelly and Odets's Paradise Lost should have been described as Chekhov plays, with their themes of middle-class family decline.
