War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Search eText, Read Online, Study, Discuss. Best way to read War and Peace? I just finished Don Quixote and I am currently reading Les Misï¿½rables. I bought those books along with War and Peace to read one after the other, shortest first. My question is, what is the best and most rewarding way to read War and Peace? I only ask this due to the large cast of characters and historical refrences (I only have a basic understanding of the Napoleonic wars). Should I use a study guide, chapter by chapter summary etc etc. Also what would be the best reading schedule that will allow me to finish the book in 2-3 months (my copy is 1444 pages)? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks! Posted By thekingrat at Thu 21 Jul 2016, 9:22 PM in War and Peace || 9 Replies War and Peace: The Sequel Having just finished War and Peace last week, I am now champing at the bit for information on the continuation of the story. I've scoured the internet, as I am sure many of you on this forum have.

I found an intriguing piece from 1996 on an actual sequel written in Russia. It follows the theme of Tolstoy's original concept, "The Decembrists", but apparently with a modern predilection for steaminess. It's called "Pierre and Natasha", authored anonymously, and presumably unavailable to English-reading audiences. Please read the article at the attached link, and let me know if any of you have any clues as to how to get this book. Posted By Steve Martin at Sat 25 Jul 2015, 6:29 PM in War and Peace || 0 Replies Natasha and the "dirty diaper"? The great courses lecture on War and Peace talks about its ending with Natasha coming in with a dirty diaper. ("Classics of Russian Literature" , taught by Irwin Weil from the teaching company) None of the translations I have seem to contain that. . . WHERE IS IT? D Provine Posted By provine at Fri 21 Feb 2014, 8:08 PM in War and Peace || 0 Replies The Second Epilogue I've re-read War and Peace in just over a month.

Wonderful it is indeed until I come to the Second Epilogue, with Count Lev going round and round in circles about a Philosophy of History. He seems to be saying that any existing philosophy of history is wrong. Frankly, I couldn't care. These turgid self-indulgent pages by someone who was no doubt a good, imaginative and humane man are something I find terminally boring. Posted By Jackson Richardson at Sat 25 Jan 2014, 3:14 PM in War and Peace || 1 Reply Is Lise Bolskonski pregnant for 18 months?! Hello, I've recently started reading War & Peace. Not finished yet, so I don't want to read through the topics in case it spoils,y reading. So apologies if it's been mentioned already :) A Google search brought me here regarding Natasha's age, which I believe is linked to the problem I noticed. Lise is pregnant when Prince Andrew leaves for war. She is described as "waddling" so I'm assuming she is already quite far along.

Anyway, when the war is over, Tolstoy says Nicholas Rostov has been away for 18 months, so I'm assuming it was the same for Prince Andrew more or less, given that he was also missing. So he comes home and his wife is giving birth... 18 months after he left?! Is it a mistake in the book or something I misunderstood? Thanks :) Posted By Camillalice at Sun 27 Oct 2013, 8:23 AM in War and Peace || 0 Replies Finally starting War and Peace films/book project Nearly two years after announcing my intent, I'm finally having a go at War and Peace. To sum up, I'm first watching three filmed versions in order of increasing length: The 1956 American/Italian version (3 1/2 hours), the classic 1966-67 four-part Russian version (7 hours), and the 20-part BBC-TV serial from 1972-73 (15 hours). I'm hoping this three-stage introduction will help me remember who is who and doing what during the actual read without constantly having to stop and look people up.

First, the 1956 version, starring noted Russian actors Henry Fonda, Audrey Hepburn, and Mel Ferrer. I joke, but looking up the main cast in IMDB, I see American, English, Dutch, Italian, Czech, Austrian, and Swedish, but no Russian. Scanning the secondary cast listing, I finally find a Russian-sounding name: Dimitri Konstantinov, with the promising credit "Young Officer at Orgy" (though this being a 1950s major studio release, and PG-rated to boot, I probably shouldn't get my hopes up). Further down, I find one more: Savo Raskovitch as Czar Alexander I. That looks to be about it for authenticity, though. From what I've read, this version seems to be the runt of the litter, especially when compared to the revered Russian version. Since I'm going into this with no preconceptions, and minimal knowledge of the original story (I only know it involves a love triangle between two men named Pierre and Andrei and a woman named Natasha, with Napoleon's invasion as a backdrop), let's see how this movie works on its own merits.

*time jump* Having watched the film in three parts over the last three days, I can say that this may be the most un-epic epic I've ever seen. Most of the cast emoted professionally enough but it was all very stage-actey and artificial (though Herbert Lom as Napoleon was a definite win). This seemed to be a deliberate style decision, but it resulted in none of the characters feeling real, so I was never able to get really involved. There was also little sense of forward propulsion in the story, just coasting and looking at people doing their thing. I never felt any kind of build toward a climax. And the love triangle itself wasn't even much of one, since not much time was spent on the main three characters together. I can't say how much of the lack of life was due to trims to the source material, but that shouldn't be an excuse anyway; Gone with the Wind was a pretty huge novel, and that movie still beats this one in pretty much every way. Just compare the scenes in the two movies involving the heroines dealing with the wounded. My rating on this one: 6/10 Still, it did its job. Now I know the main characters and the basic story.

Next up: The Russians liked this movie but thought they could do better. I hope so. Posted By Calidore at Wed 30 Jan 2013, 9:39 PM in War and Peace || 8 Replies War and Peace: The Movie(1956) and the Novel WAR AND PEACE: Leo Tolstoy and Me stoy Part 1: The 1956 release of War and Peace was the first English-language film version of the novel War and Peace by the Russian novelist and short-story writer, essayist and playwright Leo Tolstoy(1828-1910). This 1956 film was released into cinemas when I was 12, in grade 7, and responsible for the marquee at the Roxy Theatre in Burlington Ontario. I got into all the films that came into town---free---at least while I had that part-time job in my senior years of primary school. I don’t remember ever seeing War and Peace until it was televised this afternoon.(1) War and Peace won many awards; I leave it to readers here to find out which ones.

I also leave it to readers to take-in, if their interests allow, the available summaries and analyses of both the novel and of the film, of Tolstoy’s life and of any other relevant Russian literary life and history that is of interest to them.-Ron Price with thanks to (1)ABC1 TV, 12:00-3:25 p.m., 22/12/’12. As a student and, then, teacher of English literature from the 1950s to the first years of the 21st century, I was blest with never having to either read this work or teach it as part of the curriculum. The book is one of the longest novels ever written, and one of the most famous---arguably---the most famous. I will also leave the reading of that novel to readers at some time in their lives as the internet publishing world, and the many publishing houses around the planet, pile on their reading matter for 21st century students and readers.

As we all run-the-gauntlet of the print and image glut that faces us in this new and troubled age, Tolstoy requires hard yards for the KISS generations, the keep-it-simple-silly literary language of our times. Part 2: Tolstoy began his tertiary studies at the age of 16 in law and oriental languages at Kazan University. The year was 1844, the same year that Karl Marx published his first writings, and the year that the first message: "what hath God wrought?" went across a telegraph wire. Tolstoy was described by his teachers as "both unable and unwilling to learn". I won’t give you chapter and verse of this man’s fascinating life for that, too, you can read about at your leisure, if you have the interest. I will note here, though, one fact of interest to me, if not to you, about the dissolute university student who was Tolstoy and who, by his 40s, had transformed himself into a number of roles for which he acquired in the decades ahead---fame and renown. One of these roles was as an educator whose school, whose learning system, was a direct forerunner to A.

S. Neill's Summerhill School, a man, a school, and an educational system which I will also leave to readers to google at their leisure this summer. If readers of this prose-poem of mine here at this Literature Network Forum live in the northern hemisphere, then, they can do their googling during this winter holiday. The school Tolstoy founded in his 40s can justifiably be claimed to be the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 22/12/’12. It helped having Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda in starring roles, but I’m glad I never had to either read or teach this immense, great, pastiche of a book, the 7th longest, as far as I know.…Working on it as(1) he was when Darwin’s Origin of the Species hit the public in 1859…... I’ve been working on this book for nearly 50 years; had it on my to-do list, but I’ve got lost in the world of print and image-glut.

I’ve put novels down on the back-burner in a lesser category as far back as the 1950s, a half-century-of-life or more-ago, ago. You said, Leo, that there was a man in Akka who had found the key to it all.(2) I came across this idea over 50 years ago at the same time as a friend was reading your writing...immersed as I was in history and philosophy.....To read your War & Peace was impossible for me then and now, given my long reading lists then, my proclivities now, and the fact that these evenings of my life are coming at me faster than the speed of light, as I head into the last hours of my life-night before...dawn. (1) Tolstoy himself, somewhat enigmatically, said of War and Peace that it was "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle”. He went on to elaborate that “the best Russian literature does not conform to standard norms” and, hence, he hesitated to call War and Peace a novel. The book is actually the seventh longest novel ever written in a Latin or Cyrillic-based alphabet.

It is subdivided into four books or volumes, each with sub-parts containing many chapters. See War and Peace at Wikipedia. (2) See Leo Tolstoy and the Baha’i Faith, Luigi Stendardo, translated form the French by Jeremy Fox, George Ronald, Oxford, 1985, p.53. Ron Price 22/12/’12 (final draft) Posted By Ron Price at Sat 22 Dec 2012, 9:24 PM in War and Peace || 4 Replies Did Pierre Cheat on Natasha? In the first epilogue, Pierre and Natasha discuss their former quarrels after Pierre returns from Petersburg. Pierre says he loves Natasha and even if they're at odds when they part, he develops a lot of love for her after they've been parted for a while. This makes Natasha a little queasy, and Pierre says, "No, I never stopped loving you, it's not that..." He doesn't finish the sentence. Natasha says their quarrels are silly and when Pierre mentions jealousy, she shuts him up, afraid to open a new can of worms.

After a moment of silence, she asks him, "Did you see her?" Pierre says no. Does this interaction imply that Pierre cheated on Natasha at one point in their marriage or is my reading incorrect? I've searched Wikipedia, Sparknotes, and Cliffnotes, but to no avail :( Posted By konish at Mon 13 Aug 2012, 3:39 AM in War and Peace || 1 Reply A Novice and "War and Peace" I'm about to begin War and Peace (Tolstoy of course) and having only read a dozen or so of his short stories, I got the bright idea I would consult you bright folks for tips. I've heard people keeping notebooks to track characters, things like that. Anything that might be helpful is welcome indeed. Thanks in advance. Posted By ZTay at Tue 24 Jul 2012, 3:16 AM in War and Peace || 5 Replies Russians Speaking French?

I'm reading a newer translation of War and Peace, one that claims to be truer to the original than the standard Maude translation (I don't know if it is; I don't read Russian), and one of the ways in which it does this is keep the original French text. While I'm reading, I keep wondering why the Russians speak so much French, when they're fighting the French. Even the emperor speaks French. What's the deal with that? Posted By Mutatis-Mutandis at Thu 14 Jun 2012, 8:34 PM in War and Peace || 4 Replies War and Peace: on the set of the BBC's epic Tolstoy adaptation War and Peace: on the set of the BBC's epic Tolstoy adaptation The French Army retreats from Moscow with its Russian prisoners Credit: Laurie Sparham Lucinda Everett 3 January 2016 • 9:38am Of all the places I would expect to find a sumptuous adaptation of War and Peace being filmed, a former textiles factory on the industrial outskirts of Vilnius, Lithuania, is the last.

In fact, only the cast buzzing in and out of their trailers in 19th-century garb convinces me that I am in the right place. But inside, as I walk past endless workshops and on to the cavernous ex-factory floor – now storing everything from period furniture and cannons to fire-ravaged houses and full-size model horses – the building’s chief selling point becomes clear: it is enormous. Well suited, then, to a BBC production that is as gargantuan as its source material. Lily James and James Norton as Natasha Rostova and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky Credit: Laurie Sparham First published in full in 1869 and spanning 15 years, Leo Tolstoy’s novel follows five aristocratic Russian families through the Napoleonic invasion. Simultaneously an intimate love story, weighty philosophical treatise and sweeping tale of war depicting much of Europe, it is a text few have adapted for the small screen (the BBC’s 1972 series starring Anthony Hopkins was the last attempt in Britain). This time, the BBC has partnered with the American film studio the Weinstein Company to suitably cinematic effect.

Adapted by Andrew Davies (who has written tele-vision screenplays for the likes of Pride and Prejudice and Bleak House), the first of six one-hour episodes is a dizzying blur of breathtaking landscapes, lavish palaces and full-scale battle sequences, played out by a stellar cast including Paul Dano, Lily James, Jim Broadbent and Gillian Anderson. • War & Peace first look review, 'breathtaking' At the heart of the story lie the trials and triumphs of three characters: the soulful, spirited Natasha Rostova (James); cynical, ambitious Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (James Norton); and eccentric misfit Pierre Bezukhov (Dano). As Natasha tries to navigate a path between these, her two great loves (via a ruinous affair with a dangerous hard-living soldier, Anatole Kuragin, played by Callum Turner), the men desperately search for fulfilment – Andrei through love, war and politics, Pierre through religion and philosophy.

"On our first day's filming, we did the equivalent of closing down Trafalgar Square and shooting in Buckingham Palace" Julia Stannard - Producer Meanwhile, the rest of the novel’s characters fight, love, party and scheme as best they can in the fast-changing world of the Napoleonic Wars . ‘The characters do feel oddly like us,’ Davies says, ‘which is extraordinary because most of them are fabulously rich aristocrats. But they’re like us in terms of what they want – their ambitions and hopes and dreams and wanting to fall in love.’ The producer Julia Stannard joined the project in November 2013, and when we meet in June she has been marshalling 150 cast members, 600 extras and up to 300 crew members around countless Eastern European locations for five months. But she wouldn’t have had it any other way. ‘War and Peace is about the motherland, so I thought, “The only way to do this is to go to Russia,” and the Russian production company couldn’t have been keener to help us.

On our first day’s filming in St Petersburg we did the equivalent of closing down Trafalgar Square and shooting in Buckingham Palace.’ Unfortunately, Russia was too expensive to shoot in for long, so the team found alternatives. Latvia’s vast Rundāle Palace provided St Petersburg’s interiors, and Vilnius became a base for almost everything else. ‘They have a filming community here, so they can facilitate a shoot of this scale,’ says Stannard, who cannot share the production’s budget but insists I would ‘be amazed at what we’re doing it for’. Watch | War & Peace trailer 01:03 Through a heavy curtain is the studio set, which is in its fourth incarnation of the shoot: a room at the Rostovs’ country estate, complete with moose heads, bearskin rugs and beautiful gold samovars. Count Rostov ( Adrian Edmondson ) is watching dolefully as his impetuous son Nikolai (Jack Lowden) declares his love for his penniless cousin Sonya (Aisling Loftus), sparking a passionate tirade from the countess (Greta Scacchi), who is determined to save the family from impending financial ruin by marrying Nikolai ‘well’.

It is moments like these that won Davies over to the novel. He admits he had not read it until he was commissioned to write the screenplay. ‘I’d been putting it off – I thought it might be monumentally dull – but I was delighted to find out how entertaining it was,’ he says. Having decided to ‘build the [screenplay] outwards’ from the characters of Pierre, Andrei and Natasha (‘I was pretty much in love with Natasha. She’s very impulsive [and] she won’t be put down – she says what she thinks’), he took an unapologetically subjective approach. ‘I thought, “What am I interested in?” There were some subplots… that weren’t directly enough concerned with our favourite characters, so I was quite ruthless about chucking those out.’ His creative liberties have brought him under fire recently , with scholars furious about an incest storyline, which they argue is not in the text. Davies has defended his decision, saying, ‘Tolstoy hints very clearly that the characters of Hélène and Anatole Kuragin have been having an incestuous relationship.

The convention of the day means that Tolstoy would never have actually written the scene.’ On location at Catherine Palace in St Petersburg Credit: Laurie Sparham Davies was similarly inventive with his dialogue. ‘Dickens and Jane Austen have a particularly distinctive turn of phrase, which you want to use as much as possible, but working from a translation meant that I didn’t need to be particularly respectful… because it wasn’t Tolstoy’s actual words.’ For Dano, 31, working with Tolstoy’s text, in whatever form, provided an irresistible opportunity to learn. ‘That’s probably my favourite part of what I do,’ he says. ‘I didn’t finish college but I took Russian- literature courses. [When I got the part] I thought, “Now instead of paying to study this book I can live it out.”’ He was, he admits, ‘plenty intimidated’ by the project. ‘It’s a bear of a part and required a big commitment and a long time away from home. Luckily we had such a good group of people on set.’ One of Dano’s closest co-stars is 26-year-old Lily James (seen earlier this year starring in Disney’s Cinderella), whom I meet in her trailer.

Sitting in a floral empire-line dress, her feet tucked under her, she tells me she is just about coping with the ‘huge amount of pressure’ involved in playing one of literature’s greatest heroines. Another challenge, she adds, was filming during a global promotional tour for Cinderella. The director, Tom Harper, on set Credit: Laurie Sparham ‘I’d be here for three days, then go to Japan, come back, then go to LA,’ she says, grimacing. ‘I was constantly a bit jet-lagged and confused. That’s why I did so much work beforehand.’ She gestures to a scribble-covered copy of the novel. Scenes are shot out of chronological order. ‘There’s been no continuity of age, place or state, so I listen to music to capture a certain state of mind,’ James says. ‘When Natasha is a teenager falling in love with Anatole it was Whitney Houston power ballads on full blast. My boyfriend [the actor Matt Smith ] sent me some Keith Jarrett, this soulful jazz pianist. I used that when Natasha’s realising what she’s lost.’ "Davies hadn't read the novel until he was commissioned to write.

‘I thought it might be monumentally dull'" James’s favourite moment was the Tsar’s ball in St Petersburg . ‘We were in Catherine Palace, where it really would have happened, and when the orchestra recorded the music for Andrei and Natasha’s waltz, the acoustic was so magical that the last note went on for about a minute.’ Outside in the sun, Norton, 29, tells me about a meeting he had with Lev Dodin, the artistic director of the Maly Drama Theatre. ‘He’s a massive deal, and through a translator he told me that [Russians] never have anyone below 40 playing Andrei because his “circles of contemplation” are too complex. He said one thing in English as he was leaving, which was, “Oh, James? Good luck.” It was a real sense of, “This is our Hamlet – don’t f­— it up.”’ Kit Connor as Petya, Adrian Edmondson as Count Rostov, Greta Scacchi as Countess Rostova and Jack Lowden as Nikolai Credit: Laurie Sparham Battle sequences were filmed on Lithuanian farmland, resculpted to match the historical battlefields.

‘It was like a childhood dream,’ Norton says. ‘But suddenly you’re given a real sword and 200 men.’ Later, in the studio’s military department, where uniforms jostle for space with swords, kitbags, muskets and more, I am told that much of the equipment was custom-made. Particularly impressive are the enormous flags, based on historical depictions to make sure that the right battalions fly the right designs during the right battles. The director, Tom Harper , consulted a panel of experts, from literary to military to architectural, throughout the project, to ensure historical accur-acy, but scale, he tells me, has made things trickier. ‘You realise you can only do so much,’ he explains during a brief break. ‘[At that time], military uniforms changed every year. There’s no way we could have recreated every costume for every character, or put 250,000 people on a battlefield. So it forces you to think carefully: what’s the thing you cannot compromise on? What can you do cleverly in another way?’ One decision was to train local enthusiasts as military extras. Some were so good they eventually joined the ranks of the stunt performers.

The supervising art director Henry Jaworski was similarly impressed with the Lithuanian art department. ‘There isn’t an architectural-reclaim industry here,’ he explains, while showing me pictures of European-inspired pastel drawing rooms, chunky wooden Moscow architecture and brightly coloured interiors. ‘The communist era saw all that stuff ripped out – it’s gone – so you either make it or hire it in from a long way away. Luckily, the skills available in Lithuania are as good as at home, and they’re less expensive. We’ve had a seamstress making swag and tail curtains – you could never afford that at home – and when we found the manufacturer’s drawings for a Napoleonic cannon on the internet, we just issued it to our workshop.’ The team was also allowed to copy images from the Hermitage Museum for the set’s portraits, provided they destroyed them as soon as filming was over.

Gillian Anderson as Anna Pavlovna Scherer, with Paul Dano as Pierre Bezukhov Credit: Laurie Sparham The following day, the locations manager Jonas Spokas shows me a near-derelict former hospital with a beautiful old conservatory, now restored and filled with plants to become part of the Rostovs’ Moscow residence. It is a rarity, he explains. ‘Most of the old buildings were destroyed or terribly modernised in the Soviet invasion. It was difficult for the British crew to understand that there’s almost nothing left.’ His job became even harder when scouting for ‘old Moscow’, with much of the city destroyed in the 1812 fire. In the end, the main street of Vilnius’s Old Town was transformed using wooden facades. ‘We had to shut down the street for two days – remove the electricity, get police in, pay the shops we were closing.’ Later, I visit the costume department, which is stuffed with every imaginable garment and accessory. There are silk gowns, furs, linen smocks and bulky sheepskin coats, embroidered shirts, racks of hats and boxes of glinting jewellery.

‘There were about 400 costumes for the principals and we made 85 per cent of them, with 12 people sewing and four cutting,’ says the head of the department, Edward K Gibbon. ‘Then we rented around 1,000 costumes from all over Europe and had 600 uniforms made in Poland.’ That accounts for the volume, but what about the variety? ‘We cover so many years,’ Gibbon explains. ‘It starts off with the characters looking towards Europe, so it’s very French and Regency, with simple designs and lots of white. Then, throughout the story, they rediscover their culture, and by the end the style is more peasanty – it’s all about being on the land. The main thing for me was that it’s not an English story, it’s Russian – it’s this vibrant, exotic world. They loved crazy colour combinations, for example, so it was really important to get those influences in.’ Lily James used music to capture Natasha's state of mind Credit: Laurie Sparham Gibbon also drew on local skills in Lithuania. ‘Some traditional peasant fabrics are still made here using the same techniques.

We’ve had smocking, embroidery and dyeing done, and had shoes and gloves made.’ Natasha’s jewellery for the Tsar’s ball was made by a Russian company, which referenced parts of the novel in its designs. The spectacular costumes, gorgeous sets and cinematic battles may initially draw audiences to this adaptation, but, according to almost everybody I speak to on set, there is something else that will keep them hooked: a story that is ‘modern and present and relevant’, as Dano puts it.

‘Circumstances change, but some of the things that we have to deal with in life are timeless: heartache or society, class or greed, war or love.’ War and Peace starts on January 3 at 9pm on BBC One Follow Telegraph Entertainment War and Peace 3-Volume Boxed Set (Complete 15 books) eBook by Leo Tolstoy - 1230000106121 | Kobo Book Fourteen: 1812 Book Fifteen: 1812-13 'If life could write, it would write like Tolstoy.' Isaac Babel Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, are intimately connected with the national history that is played out in parallel with their lives. Balls and soirees alternate with councils of war and the machinations of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles with everyday human passions in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed.

The prodigious cast of characters, both great and small, seem to act and move as if connected by threads of destiny as the novel relentlessly questions ideas of free will, fate, and providence. Yet Tolstoy's portrayal of marital relations and scenes of domesticity is as truthful and poignant as the grand themes that underlie them. In this revised and updated version of the definitive and highly acclaimed Maude translation, Tolstoy's genius and the power of his prose are made newly available to the contemporary reader. Buy the eBook Leo Tolstoy - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss. Leo Tolstoy Biography of Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian author, essayist and philosopher wrote the epic novel War and Peace (1865-69), Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears subject to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from that connection appears to be free. How should the past life of nations and of humanity be regardedï¿½as the result of the free, or as the result of the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for history. (Epilogue 2, Ch.

VIII) Anonymously narrated, the novel is set during the Napoleonic wars, the era which forms the backdrop of Tolstoyï¿½s painstakingly detailed depiction of early 19th century Tsarist Russia under Alexander I: her archetypes and anti-heroes. Through his masterful development of characters Pierre, Andrew, Natasha, Nicholas, Mary and the rest, War and Peace examines the absurdity, hypocrisy, and shallowness of war and aristocratic society. It all comes to a climax during the Battle of Borodino. Initially Tolstoyï¿½s friends including Ivan S. Turgenev and Gustave Flaubert decided that the novelsï¿½ ï¿½formlessnessï¿½ weakened the overall potential for its success, but they were soon proved wrong. Almost one hundred years after his death, in January of 2007, Tolstoyï¿½s Anna Karenina (1878) and War and Peace were placed on Time magazineï¿½s ten greatest novels of all time, first and third place respectively.

Childhood: days of idyll, Moscow and Kazan University Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on 28 August 1828 into a long line of Russian nobility. He was the fourth child of Countess Maria Volkonsky (who Tolstoy does not remember, as she died after giving birth to his sister Mariya in 1830) and Count Nicolay Ilyich Tolstoy (1797-1837) a Lieutenant Colonel who was awarded the order of St. Vladimir for his service. At the age of sixteen he had fathered a son with a servant girl, Leoï¿½s half-brother Mishenka. When Count Tolstoy resigned from his last post with the Military Orphanage, a marriage was arranged between him and Maria Volkonsky. After her death the Countï¿½s distant cousin Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya ï¿½Aunt Tatyanaï¿½, who already lived with them helped him in running the household, raising the children and overseeing their tutoring.

Leoï¿½s paternal grandfather Count Ilya Andreyevich Tolstoy (d.1820) had been an overly generous and trusting man; by the time Leo was born the Tolstoy fortunes had dwindled and the newlyweds settled at the Volkonsky family estate ï¿½Yasnaya Polyanaï¿½ (meaning ï¿½Clear Gladeï¿½) located in Tula Region, Shchekino District of central Russia. Leoï¿½s maternal great grandfather Prince Nikolas Sergeyevich Volkonsky had established it in the early 1800s; upon his death his daughter Countess Volkonsky inherited it. It is now preserved as a State Memorial and National Preserve. From Leoï¿½s Introduction to biographer Paul Birukoffï¿½s Leo Tolstoy: Childhood and Early Manhood (1906) we gather the very clear and fond memories he has of his early years and his loved ones: my father never humbled himself before any one, nor altered his brisk, merry, and often chaffing tone. Count Tolstoy was a gentle, easy going man.

Quick to tell a joke, he was reluctant to mete out corporal punishment that was so common at the time to the hundreds of serfs on their estate. He disliked wolf-baiting and fox-hunting, preferring to ride in the fields and forests, or walking with his children and their pack of romping greyhounds. Leo recounts outings with his siblings, friends, and paternal grandmother Pelageya Nikolayevna Tolstoy (d.1838) to pick hazelnuts; she seemed a dreamy magical figure to him. Sometimes he spent the evening in her bedroom while their blind story-teller Lev Stepanovich narrated lengthy, enchanting tales. Leo greatly admired his oldest brother Nikolay ï¿½Kokoï¿½ (1823-1860). In recollecting their childhood Leo revered him, along with his mother, as saintly in their modesty, humility, and unwillingness to condemn or judge others. His other siblings were Sergey (b.1826), Dmitriy (1827-1855) and Mariya (b1830).

The Tolstoy House was a bustling household, often with extended family members and friends visiting for dinner or staying for days at a time. The children and adults played Patience, the piano, put on plays, sang Russian and Gypsy folk songs and read stories and poetry aloud. A voracious reader, Leo would visit his father in his study as he read and smoked his pipe. Sometimes the Count would have young Leo recite memorised passages from Alexander Pushkin . The family home still contains the library of over twenty thousand books in over thirty languages. When not indoors, there was no shortage of outdoor activities for the children: tobogganing in winter, horseback riding, playing in the orchards, forests, formal gardens, greenhouses and bathing in the large pond which Leo loved to do all his life. Days in the country however were to come to an end when, in 1836, the Tolstoys moved to Moscow so that the boys could attend school. The following summer Count Tolstoy died suddenly. He was buried at Tula.

Leo had a hard time accepting this inevitability of life; the loss of his father was a profound experience to such a young boy and as he watched his beloved grandmother Pelageya (who died two years later) suffer through her grief, he had his first spiritual questionings. His fatherï¿½s sister, Countess Aleksandra Osten Saken ï¿½Aunt Alineï¿½ became the childrenï¿½s guardian and Nikolay and Sergey stayed with her in Moscow while Leo and his sister Mariya and Dmitriy moved back to Yasnaya Polyana to live with Aunt Tatyana. When Aunt Aline died in 1841, Leo, now aged thirteen traveled with his brothers to Kazan where their next guardians lived, Aunt and Uncle Yushkof. Despite the pall of death, loss of innocence and upheavals in living arrangements, Leo started preparations for the entrance examinations to Kazan University, wanting to enter the faculty of Oriental languages. He studied Arabic, Turkish, Latin, German, English, and French, and geography, history, and religion.

He also began in earnest studying the literary works of English, Russian and French authors including Charles Dickens , Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol , Mikhail Lermontov, Jean Jacques Rousseau , Laurence Sterne, Friedrich Schiller, and Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire . Boyhood: military service and first writings In 1844, at the age of sixteen and the end of what Tolstoy says was his childhood, and the beginning of his youth, he entered the University of Kazan to study Turco-Arabic literature. While he did not graduate beyond the second year (he would later attempt to study law) this period of his life also corresponded with his coming out into society. He and his brothers moved out of their uncleï¿½s home and secured their own rooms. No longer the provincial, there were balls and galas to attend and other such manly pursuits as drinking, gambling and visiting brothels. Tolstoy did not have much success as a student, but he would become a polyglot with at least some working knowledge of a dozen languages. He did not respond to the universitiesï¿½ conventional system of learning and left in 1847 without obtaining his degree.

Back at Yasnya Polyana and during the next few years Tolstoy agonized about what next to do with his life. He expressed his aspirations, confusion and disappointments in his diary and correspondence with his brothers and friends. He attempted to set the estatesï¿½ affairs in order but again was caught up in the life of a young nobleman, travelling between the estate and Moscow and St. Petersburg. He was addicted to gambling, racking up huge debts and having to sell possessions to pay them off including parts of his estate. He would go on drinking binges, associating with various characters of ill-repute that his Aunt Tatyana repeatedly warned him about. To her and a few other confidantes he often confessed his remorse when sober and wrote in his diary; I am living a completely brutish lifeï¿½.I have abandoned almost all my occupations and have greatly fallen in spirit. (ibid, Ch. VI) He took to wearing peasant clothes including a style of blouse that would later be named after him, ï¿½tolstovkasï¿½. He again attempted university exams in the hope that he would obtain a position with the government, but also pondered the alternative, to serve in the army.

When his brother Nikolay, who was now an officer in the Caucasian army, came to visit Yasnya Polyana for a short while, Tolstoy seized the opportunity to change his life. In the spring of 1851 they left for the Caucasus region at the southern edge of Russia. The unglamorous nomadic life they led, travelling through or staying in Cossack and Caucasian villages, meeting the simple folk who populated them, exalting in the mountainous vistas, and meeting the hardy souls who traversed and defended these regions left their indelible mark on Tolstoy. Having long corresponded with his Aunts, he now turned his pen to writing fiction. The first novel of his autobiographical trilogy Childhood (1852) was published in the magazine Sovremennik which would serialise many more of his works. It was highly lauded and Tolstoy was encouraged to continue with Boyhood (1854) and Youth (1857), although, after his religious conversion he admitted that the series was insincere and a clumsy confusion of truth with fiction (ibid, Introduction).

In 1854, during the Crimean War Tolstoy transferred to Wallachia to fight against the French, British and Ottoman Empire to defend Sevastapol. The battle inspired Sevastopol Sketches written between 1855 and 1856, published in three installments in The Contemporary magazine. In 1855 he left the army, the same year he heard about his brother Dmitryï¿½s illness. He arrived at his beside just before he succumbed to tuberculosis, the same disease to take his brother Nikolayï¿½s life on 20 September 1860. Again Tolstoy was in limbo, torn between his ï¿½unrestrained passionsï¿½ and setting forth a realistic plan for his life. He had tried unsuccessfully to educate the hundreds of muzhiks or peasants who tended his fields, founding a school for the children in the family estateï¿½s Kuzminsky House, but it proved to be frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful. He set off on travels throughout Western Europe. By this time Childhood had been translated to English and Tolstoy was a well-known author, enjoying a Countsï¿½ life as a bachelor.

When he was unable to pay a gambling debt of 1,000 rubles to publisher Katkov, incurred while playing billiards with him, Tolstoy relinquished his unfinished manuscript of The Cossacks which was printed as-is in the January 1863 issue of the magazine The Russian Messenger. Again Tolstoy vacillated between bouts of sobriety and debauch; I put men to death in war, I fought duels to slay others. I lost at cards, wasted the substance wrung from the sweat of peasants, punished the latter cruelly, rioted with loose women, and deceived men. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, and murder, all were committed by me, not one crime omitted, and yet I was not the less considered by my equals to be a comparatively moral man. Such was my life for ten years. (ibid, Ch. VI) At times in these dark days he turned to the figure of his mother and all the good she represented and to which he aspired, for; Such was the figure of my mother in my imagination.

She appeared to me a creature so elevated, pure, and spiritual that often in the middle period of my life, during my struggle with overwhelming temptations, I prayed to her soul, begging her to aid me, and this prayer always helped me much. (ibid, Introduction) But times were to change and things were soon to rapidly settle: Tolstoy fell in love. Youth: marriage, children, War and Peace and Anna Karenina In September of 1862, at the age of thirty four, Tolstoy married the sister of one of his friends, nineteen year old Sofia ï¿½Sonyaï¿½ Andreyevna Behrs (b.1844).

Their children were: Sergey (b.1863), Tatiana (b.1864), Ilya (b.1866), Leo (b.1869), Marya ï¿½Mashaï¿½ (1871-1906), Petya (1872-1873), Nicholas (1874-1875), unnamed daughter who died shortly after birth in 1875, Andrey (b.1877), Alexis (1881-1886), Alexandra ï¿½Sashaï¿½ (b.1884), and Ivan (1888-1895). Wanting her to understand everything about him before they married, Tolstoy had given Sonya his diaries to read. Even though she consented to marriage it took her some time to get over the initial shock of their content. However, the tension and jealousy they sparked between them never clearly dissipated.

In other matters Countess Tolstoy proved helpful to her husbandï¿½s writing career: she organised his rough notes, copied out drafts, and assisted with his correspondence and business affairs of the estate. Thus Tolstoy plunged into his writing: he started War and Peace in 1862 and its six volumes were published between 1863 and 1869. Listless and depressed even though it was met with much enthusiasm, Tolstoy travelled to Samara in the steppes where he bought land and built an estate he could stay at in the summer. He started writing his next epic Anna Karenina with the opening line that gloomily alluded to his own life Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way in 1873. The first chapters appeared in the Russian Herald in 1876. The same year it was published in its entirety, 1878, Count Tolstoy suffered the most intense bout of self-doubt and spiritual introspection yet; he became depressed and suicidal; his usually rational outlook on life became muddled with what he thought was a morally upright life as husband and father.

He harshly examined his motives and criticised himself for his egotistical family caresï¿½.concern for the increase of wealth, the attainment of literary success, and the enjoyment of every kind of pleasure (ibid, Intro.). So Tolstoy wrote his Confessions (1879) and began the last period of my awakening to the truth which has given me the highest well-being in life and joyous peace in view of approaching death. (ibid) A number of his non-fiction articles and novels outlining his ideology and harshly criticising the government and church followed including ï¿½The Census in Moscowï¿½, A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology (1880), A Short Exposition of the Gospels (1881), What I Believe (1882), What Then Must We Do? (1886), and On Life and Death (1892).

The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886), his drama The Power of Darkness (1888), The Kreutzer Sonata (1890), Father Sergius (written between 1890-98), Hadji Murad (written between 1896 and 1904), The Young Czar (1894), What Is Art? (1897), The Forged Coupon (1904), Diary of Alexander I (1905), and The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (1908) were also written around this time. With the publication of Resurrection (1901) Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church; but his popularity with the public was unwavering. Tolstoy the author now had a large following of disciples devoted to ï¿½Tolstoyismï¿½. Conversion and Last Years Tolstoyï¿½s main follower was a wealthy army officer, Vladimir Chertkov (1854-1910). Sonya would soon be caught in a bitter battle with him for her husbandï¿½s private diaries.

Having embraced the pacifist doctrine of non-resistance as per the teachings of Jesus outlined in the gospels, Tolstoy gave up meat, tobacco, alcohol and preached chastity. He wrote The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1893), titled after Lukeï¿½s Gospel in the New Testament. When Mahatma Gandhi read it he was profoundly moved and wrote to Tolstoy regarding the Passive Resistance movement. They started a correspondence and soon became friends. Tolstoy wrote ï¿½A Letter to a Hinduï¿½ in 1908. Admiring their ideals of a simple life of hard work, living off the land and following the teachings of Jesus, Tolstoy offered his friendship and moral and financial support to the Doukhobors. A Christian sect persecuted in Russia, many Tolstoyans assisted them in their mass emigration to Canada in 1899. Tolstoy was involved with many other causes including appealing to the Tsar to avoid civil war at all costs. In 1902 he moved back to Yasnya Polyana.

In January of 1903, as he writes in his diary, Tolstoy still struggled with his identity: where he had come from and who he had become; I am now suffering the torments of hell: I am calling to mind all the infamies of my former lifeï¿½these reminiscences do not pass away and they poison my existence. Generally people regret that the individuality does not retain memory after death. What a happiness that it does not! What an anguish it would be if I remembered in this life all the evil, all that is painful to the conscience, committed by me in a previous lifeï¿½.What a happiness that reminiscences disappear with death and that there only remains consciousness The ruminations were prompted by his friend Paul Biryukov asking him for his assistance in penning his biography. His literary executor Chertkov would write The Last Days of Leo Tolstoy (1911). For as the last days of Tolstoy were playing out, he still at times agonised over his self-worth and regretted his actions from decades earlier.

Having renounced his ancestral claim to his estate and all of his worldly goods, all in his family but his youngest daughter Alexandra scorned him. He was intent on starting a new life and did so on 28 October 1910, making it as far as the stationmasterï¿½s home at the Astapovo train station. Leo Tolstoy died there of pneumonia on 20 November 1910. Although he wanted no ceremony or ritual, thousands showed up to pay their respects. He was buried in a simple wooden coffin near Nikolayï¿½s ï¿½place of the little green stickï¿½ by the ravine in the Stary Zakaz Wood on the Yasnya Polyana estate; returned to that place of idylls where Nikolay told him one could find the secret to happiness and the end to all suffering. Biography written by C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2007. All Rights Reserved. The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission. Forum Discussions on Leo Tolstoy Recent Forum Posts on Leo Tolstoy

Question: Tolstoy's book "War and Peace" is set when?
Answer: Napoleonic Wars