Rosamund Bartlett was born in London, holds a doctorate from Oxford, and has been travelling to Russia since 1978. She began learning Russian as a schoolgirl, and is the author of Chekhov: Scenes from a Life, Tolstoy: A Russian Life and Literary Russia: A Guide. Her work as a translator includes Anton Chekhov, About Love and Other Stories, the first uncensored edition of his letters for Penguin Classics, and Anna Karenina, published by Oxford World’s Classics in 2014. Her most recent book is The Russian Soul: Selections from a Writer’s Diary by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

She has lectured on Russian literature at universities and public institutions around the world, and been commissioned to write for publications such as the Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2007 she began a campaign to restore Chekhov’s house in Yalta, and remains a Trustee of the Anton Chekhov Foundation, a UK charity set up to honour the writer’s literary and humanitarian legacy.  She is a regular visitor to Australia and is currently an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney.