Tolstoy's fiction and non-fiction, such as "Childhood, Boyhood, Youth", "Sevastopol Sketches", "Family Happiness", "Anna Karenina", and "A Confession", as autobiography.

Leo Tolstoy is one of the most celebrated fiction writers in the Western canon. Though he was passed over for the Nobel Prize, his most famous books, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, frequently vie for critics’ pick as the world’s greatest novel.

According to Rosemary Edmonds, “Tolstoy produced no work which did not contain a portrait of himself”(Introduction to Childhood, Boyhood, Youth). Tolstoy turned his intense scrutiny inwards, questioning his own experiences, actions, and morality. Tolstoy’s biography is traced by his literature.

Childhood, Boyhood, Youth

Leo Tolstoy (whose Russian name was Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy) was born in 1828 on his family’s rural estate, Yasnaya Polyana, two-hundred miles from Moscow. He was the youngest of four boys. Their mother died when Leo was 2 and he lost his father at 9, after which he was raised by an aunt.

He went to study Oriental languages and law at the University of Kazan but spent so much time with alcohol, cards, and women that he had little time for school. Tolstoy yearned for a more meaningful existence.

Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth were Tolstoy’s first fictional pieces and first published works. Tolstoy called it “a jumble of events from [his friends’] childhood and my own”. He deals with the pain of growing up, the realization of his social status, and spiritual conflicts - themes continued throughout his career.

Sevastopol Sketches

After quitting university, Tolstoy served in Russia’s campaigns in the Caucasus and the Crimea. He witnessed the gruesome terror of battle first-hand at the siege of Sevastopol.

Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Sketches portray warfare with brutal honesty. This work is often cited as the first fiction to offer a realistic portrayal of the battlefield, sparing no room for nationalism or idealization of the human character. It influenced countless future authors, such as Stratis Myrivilis, and paved the way to War and Peace.

Family Happiness and Anna Karenina

After years studying educational methods in St. Petersburg and abroad, Tolstoy started a family at Yasnaya Polyana. He married Sophia Andreyevna Behrs, 15 years his junior, in 1862. Before their marriage, Tolstoy gave Sophia a diary detailing his sexual exploits, believing that married people should have no secrets. The couple lived happily for 15 years and had 13 children. Tolstoy began several schools for peasants and immersed himself in writing.

Tolstoy wrote the novella Family Happiness in 1859, when he contemplated settling down, as an effort to understand married life. Masha, the young female protagonist, marries Sergey, a much older and more worldly man. Sergey, conscious of the age difference, tries to raise his wife to be a responsible woman. Masha discovers that marriage is not the bliss she imagined. Finally, the most they can hope for is peace and compatibility.

Anna Karenina reflects Tolstoy’s changed view that joy is possible in marriage. The novel juxtaposes two main stories that reveal this theme; the sinful romance and doomed life of Anna and the innocent, hopeful romance between Levin and Kitty. Levin, the Tolstoy-figure, gives Kitty his diary just as Tolstoy did. Levin ends his moral struggles by marrying young Kitty, moving to a rural estate, and putting his faith in God.

A Confession

At 50, Tolstoy had a spiritual crisis. He converted to extreme rationalism, rejected many government and church doctrines, disavowed lust and private property, and published pamphlets on his new ideas. He inspired a large following and was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church.

A Confession was Tolstoy’s pivotal philosophical writing from this period, detailing his life’s search for religious truth. Later works like What I Believe and The Kingdom of God is Within continued this line of thinking. Tolstoy’s preoccupation with spirituality, passive resistance, and death were also reflected in novels like Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych, and Hadji Murad, and in the simplicity of stories like Alyosha the Pot.

Read Leo Tolstoy Bio and Works to learn more.

Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. New York: Norton Critical Editions, 1995. 0-393-96642-0.

Tolstoy, Leo. Childhood, Boyhood, Youth. London: Penguin Books, 1964. ISBN# 0-14-044139-5.

Tolstoy, Leo. The Devil and Other Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN#0-19-283926-8.

Tolstoy, Leo. Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy. New York: Harper Perennial, 1967. ISBN# 0-06-083071-9.

Tolstoy, Leo. The Raid and other Short Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. ISBN# 0-19-283808-3.