This second version of The Wood Demon was completed in April 1890 and received the permission to be staged by Imperial Theatres in May.
He reduced the cast list by half, changed the climactic suicide into an anti-climax of a failed homicide, and published the reworked play, much more successfully, under the title Uncle Vanya.
A dominant theme in The Wood Demon is that destruction of the environment and of people's lives are closely linked together.
As such, it is full of biographical material collected during their time spent together in the summer of 1888.
The failure of The Wood Demon was one of the motivations for Chekhov's journey through Siberia and why he abstained from writing a play for the next seven years after which he rose to fame .