Stark Young Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" (1936) and its film adaptation of 1939 pushed Young's book into the background. Young translated a number of plays by Anton Chekhov, including "The Sea Gull", "Uncle Vanya", "The Three Sisters", and "The Cherry Orchard", all of which were published in 1956 by The Modern Library as "Best Plays by Chekhov". In the 1940s Young, a self-taught artist, began painting. He had two one-man exhibitions in New York. His paintings were shown in four important venues, including the Art Institute of Chicago, which purchased one of his works for its permanent collection. In 1951
The Seagull remain a playwright and lead to the overwhelming success of his next endeavor "Uncle Vanya", and indeed to the rest of his dramatic oeuvre. The play takes place on a country estate owned by Sorin, a retired senior civil servant in failing health. He is the brother of the famous actress Arkadina, who has just arrived at the estate for a brief vacation with her lover, the writer Trigorin. Sorin and his guests gather at an outdoor stage to see an unconventional play that Arkadina's son, Konstantin Treplyov, has written and directed. The play-within-a-play features Nina, a young woman who