His writing style was one of simplicity, clarity, and force.
Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on 28 August 1828 on the estate Iasnaia Poliana, in the province of Tula, approximately 140 miles from Moscow. He was one of five children of Count Nikolai Il'ich Tolstoy and his wife, Mariia Nikolaevna Tolstaia, née Princess Volkonskaia. Tolstoy's family belonged to the oldest Russian nobility: Tolstoy was related on his mother's side to the aristocratic Trubetskoy, Golitsyn, and Odoevsky families. On his father's side Tolstoy was descended from one of the first Russians to receive the title of graf (count): Tolstoy's ancestor Petr Andreevich Tolstoy had won the title in service to Peter I. The writer's father had fought in the war of 1812. Tolstoy lost his mother in 1830, when he was nearly two, and his father in 1837, when he was nine; he and his siblings moved to Kazan', where they were brought up by their father's distant relative "Auntie" T. A. Ergol'skaia, to whom Tolstoy was devoted. In 1844 he entered the University of Kazan', where he enrolled in the department of Turkish-Arabic studies and then transferred to law.
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