It was first commissioned while Stanislavski was in the United States on tour with the Moscow Art Theatre, and was first published in Boston, Massachusetts in English in 1924.

He first describes his family life and upbringing, discussing his early trips to the circus, the Italian opera, the ballet and his introduction to the Russian theatre.

In the first half of this section Stanislavski describes many of the plays put on by the group, beginning with their debut and ending with the events that led to the foundation of the Moscow Art Theatre on October 14, 1897.

The second half of section three describes the first nine years of the Moscow Art Theatre's existence up until their first international tour in 1906, when they traveled to Berlin.

He describes what it was like staging these plays with the aid of Chekhov himself, often through correspondence due to his tuberculosis which forced him to spend the winters in the Crimea.

He discusses his breakthroughs in the art of acting that were found through working on these plays, which laid the foundations for "realism" in the theatre.

Stanislavski's "system" was built on a compilation of material he had gathered over the course of two decades of work in the theatre, and was in a great effort to find the answers his many unanswered questions about the nature of acting as an art form.

The section also describes some of the Moscow Art Theatre's productions of various plays, including Ivan Turgenev's "A Month in the Country".

He laid the foundation for many of those who came after him, namely teachers like Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and Sanford Meisner, who passed on his legacy to the next generation of stage and film actors.