One of the finest authors of all time is Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, a Russian playwright and short-story writer who lived from 29 January 1860 to 15 July 1904. His four plays from his theatrical career are considered classics, and writers and critics highly regard his best short stories. Chekhov is sometimes listed as one of the three key figures in the development of early modernism in theater, together with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. Chekhov was a medical practitioner by trade. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once stated, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov delivers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text" in place of traditional action in these four works, which poses a challenge to both the playing group and the spectator. Chekhov's plays evoked a little eerie mood for the audience while remaining simple and easy to follow. At initially, Chekhov wrote stories to get money, but as his desire to express himself creatively grew, he introduced formal changes that helped shape the development of the contemporary short story. He insisted that an artist's job was to pose questions, not to provide answers, and offered no apology for the challenges this presented to readers.