Biography of Russian author Leo Tolstoy, one of Russia's greatest writers famous for 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina.'

Leo Tolstoy (Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy), was one of Russia's greatest writers, best known for novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, considered among the greatest books of all time. He was a contemporary of another famous Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Early Life

Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, with wealthy landowner-parents. They lived on a huge estate, Yasnaya Polyana, near Moscow. However, his parents died when he was young, leaving his aunts to bring him up. He was privately educated at home, then at Kazan University where he studied law and Asian languages. From his writings, Tolstoy had a happy childhood. A dreamy young man, he failed to graduate and moved to Moscow where he lived a fairly wild life.

Young Adult

When he was 23, he accompanied his elder brother Nikolay and joined the artillery regiment serving in the Crimean War. It was also this time that Leo Tolstoy began his literary career. He published his autobiography and Sevastapol Sketches, a view of war as soldiers see it. He toured Europe as a literary celebrity but returned to Russia, where he set up a school for peasant children on his estate.

Best Years

When he was 34, he married 18-year-old Sofya Behrs. They were happy and had 10 surviving children. Tolstoy devoted himself to his family, his writing and as a conscientious landlord. He committed to improving the lives of the peasants who lived on his Volga estate. During these years he produced his two literary masterpieces. War and Peace is a huge and complicated novel set in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. It was followed by Anna Karenina, the story of doomed love.

In his mid-life, Tolstoy went through a 'spiritual crisis' that he described in My Confession. In his serious search for God, he expounded Christ-like doctrines.As a result, he rejected materialism, war, the church, and his own wealth in favour of a simple, peasantlike life.

Quoted from his last major work A Calendar of Wisdom (refer Sources Consulted below) page 257:

"Try to establish an inner silence in yourself, a complete silence of your lips and your heart. And then you will hear how God speaks to us, and you will know how to fulfil his will."

Last Years

Leo Tolstoy died at the age of 82. This brilliant writer, philosopher, moralist and mystic seemed to look at life slam in the face: passionately, wondering, perhaps too seriously even to argue itself with life, or even death. He died at the age of 82. His two masterpieces, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, have been produced in the movies and serialized on television.

Books by Tolstoy

• 1851 Istoria vcherashchnevo dnya (Accounts of Yesterday)
• 1852 Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, an autobiographical trilogy
• 1855-56 Sevastapol Sketches
• 1865-69 War and Peace
• 1875-7 Anna Karenina
• 1884 My Confession
• 1886 How Much Land Does a Man Need?
• 1886 The Death of Ivan Ilyich
• 1895 Master and Man
• 1899 Resurrection

Related Article

Leo Tolstoy: A life in Writing

Films

Anna Karenina, 1935 film starring Greta Garbo in title role, IMDB.com

War and Peace, 1956 film versions starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda, IMDB.com

Resources:

A Calendar of Wisdom, by Leo Tolstoy, English Version translated from Russian by Peter Sekirin, Hodder and Stoughton (1997)

Dictionary of Writers, Larousse (1994)