"About Love" (Russian: О любви, romanized: O lyubvi) is an 1898 short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.

[2] The story begins with the love affair between the cook of the house, Nikanor and servant (beautiful woman) Pelageya.

This imposed idleness and the resorts-visiting is worse than any bacilli," he complained in the 21 September letter to the Mayor of Taganrog (and his one-time classmate) Pavel Yordanov whom at the time he regularly corresponded with.

[2] Lydia Avilova, Chekhov's protégé and regular correspondent, who first met him in 1889, insisted that the "About Love" told the story of the secret relationship she'd had with its author.

Chekhov in My Life (А. П. Чехов в моей жизни, finished in 1939, published posthumously, in 1947), was based upon the premise that the two "had had a secret love affair which lasted a decade and nobody was aware of.

"These memoirs are lively and exciting, and many of the things she states in them are undoubtedly true... Lydia Alexeyevna seems to be totally truthful, when she writes about her own feelings to Anton Pavlovich...

He wrote: "Avilova's memories, brilliant, highly emotional, written masterfully and with great tact, became a revelation to me.

I knew well Lydia Alexeyevna, a gifted woman with a rare sense of humour, who was also a very honest and shy person... Never did I suspect though, that they had this sort of relationship.

...Upon leaving the university, he settles in the estate that he'd inherited from his father, and starts working hard so as to pay his debts.

One of his new acquaintances, Dmitry Luganovitch, vice-president of the circuit court, described as a good-natured, simple-hearted middle-aged man, invites him home for dinner.

The in-depth analysis came from Alexander Skabichevsky in Syn Otechestva[9] and Angel Bogdanovich in the October 1898 issue of Mir Bozhy, the latter seeing the story "as a kind of setting for the environment where the Man in the Case rules."