Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Chekhov became a writer to support his family—and his first works were a ton of funny and totally inappropriate stories and jokes for cheap, mass-market magazines. He was not super proud of this work and most of it was published not under his own name but under a pseudonym. It's a pretty far cry from the later, more serious stuff, wouldn't you say? (Source.)
Chekhov was an equally amazing playwright, and pretty much every one of his plays is now considered a classic work of literature. One of his contributions to playwriting in general is a little thing called "Chekhov's gun". He describes it like this: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." Of course, this doesn't just apply to plays anymore. (Source.)