Leo (Nikolaevich) Tolstoy | Biography

Leo Tolstoy is one of the most important novelists in Western literature. The breadth of his vision and the range of his accomplishments are immense. His 1928- 1958 collected works comprise 90 volumes, and a projected new edition will reach at least 134 volumes. Tolstoy was a novelist, educator, farmer, critic, and aesthetician. He was not only the writer of Voina i mir (War and Peace, 1865-1869), Anna Karenina (1875- 1877), and dozens of short works, but also, in the last twenty years of his life, a sage who commanded the attention of people all over the world. The editor of Novoe vremia (New Times) said at the turn of the twentieth century that Russia had two czars, one in St. Petersburg and one in Iasnaia Poliana (Bright Glade, Tolstoy's estate). Although he did not come to the attention of the West until the 1870s by way of Ivan Sergeevich...
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