On 17 December 1888 Nikolai Khudekov, editor of the Peterburgskaya Gazeta, asked Chekhov to write a story for the newspaper. Learning that Chekhov's "The Cobbler and the Devil" was to be published on 25 December, Alexey Suvorin, the Novoye Vremya's editor, took offense. Promising to produce a similar kind of fable for Suvorin before New Year's Eve, Chekhov began writing 22 December and on the 30th sent the story by post.[1]
Divided into three parts, it appeared in the 1 January 1889, No. 4613 issue of Novoye Vremya, titled "Fairytale" (Сказка). With a new title, "The Bet", revised and cut with part 3 of the original text now gone, it was included in Volume 4 of Chekhov's Collected Works, published in 1899–1901 by Adolf Marks.[2] Chekhov explained the reason for the omission in 1903: "As I was reading the proofs, I came to dislike the end, it occurred to me that it was too cold and cruel."[3]
