"At Home" () is an 1897 short story by Anton Chekhov. Background "At Home" was preceded by the novella Peasants, published in April of that year, after which there was several months' break caused by Chekhov's deteriorating health. "On the account of bad weather have bought myself some paper and now sit down to write a story," Chekhov informed his sister Maria Pavlovna on 9 October 1897. "Just started to write a bit and maybe will get used to somebody else's writing desk," he wrote to his cousin Georgy Mitrofanovich Chekhov on 11 October, also from Nice, France. In retrospect, and on the basis of Chekhov's notebooks, "At Home" is now regarded as closely related to "The Petcheneg" and "In the Cart". All three stories, similar in terms of atmosphere and mood, have been worked upon during the same period, simultaneously at times. According to Maria Chekhova, the place Vera Kardina arrives at is "a large Ukrainian village of Mezhirichi" which the author had passed through in 1888. The children's writer Pavel Surozhski insisted that the area described here, as well as in "The Petcheneg", belongs to the Northern part of the Taganrog okrug, which Chekhov passed through during his trip in August 1896. Publication The story was first published on November 29 [16, old style] in Russkiye Vedomosti, No. 317, 1897 (pp. 2—3), signed: "Anton Chekhov. Nice. October". Chekhov included it into Volume 9 of his Collected Works published by Adolf Marks in 1899–1901. In his 3 November 1897 letter to Lydia Avilova he dismissed "At Home" and "The Petcheneg" as 'mere trifles'. But, preparing his stories for the Alfred Marks' Complete Works, he asked (in the 31 January 1899 letter) for both of them to be sent to him to Yalta and did not make any significant changes to the texts before sending them to the publisher.. In December 1897 the Swedish translator J. Stadling asked Chekhov for his permission for the two stories, "The Petcheneg" and "At Home" to be translated, for the Aftonbladet newspaper. Chekhov gave his permission in the 18 December 1897 letter to M.G. Vecheslov. Translated into English by Constance Garnett, it was included into the 1916 The Duel and Other Stories collection. Synopsis Both of her parents now dead, the young Vera Kardina returns to her estate, run now by her aunt. Approaching the house, lost in a vast Donetsk steppe, she enjoys