russian author leo tolstoy wrote the acclaimed novels war and peace

8/10/2019 Russian Author Leo Tolstoy Wrote the Acclaimed Novels War and Peace

1/8

Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote the acclaimed novels War and Peace, Anna

Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and still ranks among the world's top writers.

IN THESE GROUPS

FAMOUS VIRGOANS

FAMOUS PEOPLE BORN IN TULA PROVINCE (YASNAYA POLYANA)

FAMOUS PEOPLE BORN IN RUSSIA

FAMOUS PEOPLE BORN ON SEPTEMBER 9

Show All Groups

QUOTES

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.

Leo Tolstoy

Synopsis

On September 9, 1828, Leo Tolstoy was born in Tula Province, Russia. In the 1860s, he

wrote his first great novel,War and Peace. In 1873, Tolstoy set to work on the second of his

best known novels,Anna Karenina. He continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and

1890s. One of his most successful later works was The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Tolstoy died onNovember 20, 1910 in Astapovo, Russia.
http://www.biography.com/people/groups/virgohttp://www.biography.com/people/groups/virgohttp://www.biography.com/people/groups/birth-city-tula-province-yasnaya-polyanahttp://www.biography.com/people/groups/birth-city-tula-province-yasnaya-polyanahttp://www.biography.com/people/groups/born-in-russiahttp://www.biography.com/people/groups/born-in-russiahttp://www.biography.com/people/groups/born-on-september-09http://www.biography.com/people/groups/born-on-september-09http://www.biography.com/people/groups/born-on-september-09http://www.biography.com/people/groups/born-in-russiahttp://www.biography.com/people/groups/birth-city-tula-province-yasnaya-polyanahttp://www.biography.com/people/groups/virgo


2/8

1 of 2


3/8

1 of 2


4/8

1 of 2


5/8

Early Life

On September 9, 1828, writer Leo Tolstoy was born at his family's estate, Yasnaya Polyana,

in the Tula Province of Russia. He was the youngest of four boys. In 1830, when Tolstoy's

mother, ne Princess Volkonskaya, died, his father's cousin took over caring for the children.

When their father, Count Nikolay Tolstoy, died just seven years later, their aunt was

appointed their legal guardian. When the aunt passed away, Tolstoy and his siblings moved in

with a second aunt, in Kazan, Russia. Although Tolstoy experienced a lot of loss at an early

age, he would later idealize his childhood memories in his writing.

Tolstoy received his primary education at home, at the hands of French and German tutors. In

1843, he enrolled in an Oriental languages program at the University of Kazan. There,

Tolstoy failed to excel as a student. His low grades forced him to transfer to an easier law

program. Prone to partying in excess, Tolstoy ultimately left the University of Kazan in 1847,

without a degree. He returned to his parents' estate, where he made a go at becoming a

farmer. He attempted to lead the serfs, or farmhands, in their work, but he was too often

absent on social visits to Tula and Moscow. His stab at becoming the perfect farmer soon

proved to be a failure. He did, however, succeed in pouring his energies into keeping a

journalthe beginning of a lifelong habit that would inspire much of his fiction.

As Tolstoy was flailing on the farm, his older brother, Nikolay, came to visit while on

military leave. Nikolay convinced Tolstoy to join the Army as a junker, south in the Caucasus

Mountains, where Nikolay himself was stationed. Following his stint as a junker, Tolstoy

transferred to Sevastopol in Ukraine in November 1854, where he fought in the Crimean War

through August 1855.

Early Publications

While Tolstoy was working as a junker for the Army, he had free time to kill. During quiet

periods he worked on an autobiographical story calledChildhood. In it, he wrote of his

fondest childhood memories. In 1852, Tolstoy submitted the sketch to The Contemporary, the

most popular journal of the time. The story was eagerly accepted and became Tolstoy's very

first published work.

After completing Childhood, Tolstoy started writing about his day-to-day life at the Army

outpost in the Caucasus. However, he did not complete the work, entitled The Cossacks, until

1862, after he had already left the Army.

Amazingly, Tolstoy still managed to continue writing while at battle during the Crimean

War. During that time, he composedBoyhood(1854), a sequel toChildhood, the second book

in what was to become Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy. In the midst of the Crimean War,

Tolstoy also expressed his views on the striking contradictions of war through a three-part

series, Sevastopol Tales. In the second Sevastopol Talesbook, Tolstoy experimented with a

relatively new writing technique: Part of the story is presented in the form of a soldier'sstream of consciousness.


6/8

Once the Crimean War ended and Tolstoy left the Army, he returned to Russia. Back home,

the burgeoning author found himself in high demand on the St. Petersburg literary scene.

Stubborn and arrogant, Tolstoy refused to ally himself with any particular intellectual school

of thought. Declaring himself an anarchist, he made off to Paris in 1857. Once there, he

gambled away all of his money and was forced to return home to Russia. He also managed to

publish Youth, the third part of his autobiographical trilogy, in 1857.

Back in Russia in 1862, Tolstoy produced the first of a 12 issue-installment of the

journal Yasnaya Polyana, marrying a doctor's daughter named Sofya Andreyevna Bers that

same year.

Advertisement Continue reading below

Major Novels

Residing at Yasnaya Polyana with his wife and children, Tolstoy spent the better part of the

1860s toiling over his first great novel, War and Peace. A portion of the novel was first

published in theRussian Messengerin 1865, under the title "The Year 1805." By 1868, he

had released three more chapters. A year later, the novel was complete. Both critics and the

public were buzzing about the novel's historical accounts of the Napoleonic Wars, combined

with its thoughtful development of realistic yet fictional characters. The novel also uniquely

incorporated three long essays satirizing the laws of history. Among the ideas that Tolstoy

extols in War and Peaceis the belief that the quality and meaning of one's life is mainly

derived from his day-to-day activities.

Following the success of War and Peace, in 1873, Tolstoy set to work on the second of his

best known novels,Anna Karenina.Anna Kareninawas partially based on current events

while Russia was at war with Turkey. LikeWar and Peace, it fictionalized some biographical

events from Tolstoy's life, as was particularly evident in the romance of the characters Kitty

and Levin, whose relationship is said to resemble Tolstoy's courtship with his own wife.

The first sentence ofAnna Kareninais among the most famous lines of the book: "All happy

families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."Anna

Kareninawas published in installments from 1873 to 1877, to critical and public acclaim.

The royalties that Tolstoy earned from the novel contributed to his rapidly growing wealth.

Religious Conversion

Despite the success ofAnna Karenina, following the novel's completion, Tolstoy suffered a

spiritual crisis and grew depressed. Struggling to uncover the meaning of life, Tolstoy first

went to the Russian Orthodox Church, but did not find the answers he sought there. He came

to believe that Christian churches were corrupt and, in lieu of organized religion, developed

his own beliefs. He decided to express those beliefs by founding a new publication called The

Mediatorin 1883.


7/8

As a consequence of espousing his unconventionaland therefore controversialspiritual

beliefs, Tolstoy was ousted by the Russian Orthodox Church. He was even watched by the

secret police. When Tolstoy's new beliefs prompted his desire to give away his money, his

wife strongly objected. The disagreement put a strain on the couple's marriage, until Tolstoy

begrudgingly agreed to a compromise: He conceded to granting his wife the copyrightsand

presumably the royalties

to all of his writing predating 1881.

Later Fiction

In addition to his religious tracts, Tolstoy continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and

1890s. Among his later works' genres were moral tales and realistic fiction. One of his most

successful later works was the novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, written in 1886. InIvan

Ilyich, the main character struggles to come to grips with his impending death. The title

character, Ivan Ilyich, comes to the jarring realization that he has wasted his life on trivial

matters, but the realization comes too late.

In 1898, Tolstoy wroteFather Sergius, a work of fiction in which he seems to criticize the

beliefs that he developed following his spiritual conversion. The following year, he wrote his

third lengthy novel,Resurrection. While the work received some praise, it hardly matched the

success and acclaim of his previous novels. Tolstoy's other late works include essays on art, a

satirical play called The Living Corpsethat he wrote in 1890, and a novella calledHadji-

Murad(written in 1904), which was discovered and published after his death.

Elder YearsOver the last 30 years of his life, Tolstoy established himself as a moral and religious leader.

His ideas about nonviolent resistance to evil influenced the likes of social leader Mahatma

Gandhi.

Also during his later years, Tolstoy reaped the rewards of international acclaim. Yet he still

struggled to reconcile his spiritual beliefs with the tensions they created in his home life. His

wife not only disagreed with his teachings, she disapproved of his disciples, who regularly

visited Tolstoy at the family estate. Their troubled marriage took on an air of notoriety in the

press. Anxious to escape his wife's growing resentment, in October 1910, Tolstoy and hisdaughter, Aleksandra, embarked on a pilgrimage. Aleksandra, Tolstoy's youngest daughter,

was to serve as her elderly father's doctor during the trip. Valuing their privacy, they traveled

incognito, hoping to dodge the press, to no avail.

Death and Legacy

Unfortunately, the pilgrimage proved too arduous for the aging novelist. In November 1910,

the stationmaster of a train depot in Astapovo, Russia opened his home to Tolstoy, allowing

the ailing writer to rest. Tolstoy died there shortly after, on November 20, 1910. He was

buried at the family estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in Tula Province, where Tolstoy had lost so


8/8

many loved ones yet had managed to build such fond and lasting memories of his childhood.

Tolstoy was survived by his wife and their brood of 10 children. (The couple had spawned 13

children in all, but only 10 had survived past infancy.)

To this day, Tolstoy's novels are considered among the finest achievements of literarywork. War and Peaceis, in fact, frequently cited as the greatest novel ever written. In

contemporary academia, Tolstoy is still widely acknowledged as having possessed a gift for

describing characters' unconscious motives. He is also championed for his finesse in

underscoring the role of people's everyday actions in defining their character and purpose.

russian author leo tolstoy wrote the acclaimed novels war and peace

Documents