"The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories" collects six of Tolstoy's finest short stories into one edition. In "How Much Land Does a Man Need?", Tolstoy explores this very question through the story of a peasant with an increasing appetite for land-an appetite which becomes his ruin. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", one of Tolstoy's short masterpieces, tells of the early death of a high-court judge in 19th century Russian. "Family Happiness" explores the...

In Tolstoy's powerful tale of family passions set in Russia in the 1870s, Anna, the young and beautiful wife of a powerful older man, risks more than she can imagine when she runs away with the dashing Count Vronsky.

In November 1910, Count Lev Tolstoy died at a remote Russian railway station. At the time of his death, he was the most famous man in Russia, more revered than the tsar, with a growing international following. Born into an aristocratic family, Tolstoy spent his existence rebelling against not only conventional ideas about literature and art but also traditional education, family life, organized religion, and the state. In "an epic biography that...

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1993" Donna Tussing Orwin is Research Associate at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Toronto. "My aim is to present Tolstoy's work as he may have understood it himself," writes Donna Orwin. Reconstructing the intellectual and psychic struggles behind the masterpieces of his early and middle age, this major study covers the period during which he wrote The Cossacks,...

In his major new history of the Russian conflict immortalized by Tolstoy in "War and Peace," Lieven provides an examination of the period from the Russian perspective, demonstrating that Napoleon's defeat in 1812 by the Russian army was just the beginning of what would be the longest military campaign in European history.

This collection of eleven stories spans virtually the whole of Tolstoy's creative life. While each is unique in form, as a group they are representative of his style and touch on the central themes that surface in War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Stories as different as “The Snowstorm”, “Lucerne”, “The Diary of a Madman”, and “The Devil” are grounded in autobiographical experience. They deal with journeys of self-discovery and the...

A collection of critical essays on Tolstoy and his works arranged in chronological order of publication.