Leo tolstoy biography online princess

Leo Tolstoy Archive

Biography of Leo Tolstoy
by Robert Nisbet Bain

Written: 1903
Source: Text from WikiSource.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source:WikiSource.org; 2021

Lev Nikolaivich Tolstoi was born on September 9th, 1828, at his father's estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in the Government of Tula. His family is said to have been of German descent, originally bearing the somewhat plebeian name of Dick, which they changed for its Russian equivalent Tolsty, when they migrated to Muscovy at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The first eminent member of the stock was Peter Andrievich (1645-1727), one of Peter the Great's most famous "fledgelings," renowned for his energy, versatility, and diplomatic finesse, whom his master richly endowed and raised to countly rank. Yet Peter himself seems always to have stood on his guard against him. "Tolstoi," he is reported to have said, "is an able and intelligent man; but it is just as well, when you have anything to do with him, to have a good big stone handy, that you may be able to break his teeth in case it should suddenly occur to him to bite you." It was this sinister sleuth-hound who hunted down the unfortunate Tsarevich Alexis in his Neapolitan retreat, and thus drew down upon himself the well-merited hatred of the Russian people, who regarded the murdered Prince as a martyr for orthodoxy. Another ancestor, Peter Aleksandrevich (1769-1844), was a notable warrior, who, after fighting the Poles and Turks under Suvorov and Napoleon under Bennigsen, crushed the Polish revolt of 1831, and quitted the army with the rank of a Field-Marshal The Tolstois, though not belonging to the ancient Muscovite Boyar families themselves, have always held their heads high amomg the modern Russian aristocracy, and it used to be the boast of the family that not a single member of it had ever contracted a misalliance, Tolstoi's own mother was a Princess Volkhonskaya, his paternal grandmother wa

  • Leo tolstoy works
  • Leo tolstoy education

    • AUTOBIOGRAPHY
    OF
    COUNTESS TOLSTOY
    [SOPHIE ANDREEVNA TOLSTOY]

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Autobiography of Countess Tolstoy, by Sophie Andreevna Tolstoy This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Autobiography of Countess Tolstoy Author: Sophie Andreevna Tolstoy Translator: S.S. Koteliansky Leonard Woolf Release Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #38027] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF COUNTESS TOLSTOY *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.)

    AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
    COUNTESS TOLSTOY

    TRANSLATED BY
    S. S. KOTELIANSKY
    AND
    LEONARD WOOLF







    NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.MCMXXII

    COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
    B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.
    ——
    PRINTED IN U. S. A.

    CONTENTS
    Translators' Note,7
    Preface by Vassili Spiridonov,9
    Autobiography,27
          I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII
    Notes,109
    Appendix I.
    Semen Afanasevich Vengerov,    		143
    Appendix II.
    Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov,    		146
    Appendix III.
    Tolstoy's First Will,    		149
    Appendix IV.
    Tolstoy's Will of 22 July, 1910,    		153
    Appendix V.
    Tolstoy's Going Away,    		155

    TRANSLATORS' NOTE

    THE circumstances under which this autobiography of Tolstoy's wife has just been discovered and published in Russia are explained in the preface of Vassili Spiridonov which follows. Spiridonov edited and published it in the first number of a new Russian review, Nachala. We have translated his preface in full and also the greater number of his notes, which contain much material with regard to Tolstoy which has n

    Leo Tolstoy
    by
    Inessa Medzhibovskaya
    • LAST REVIEWED: 20 February 2024
    • LAST MODIFIED: 20 February 2024
    • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0104

  • Bayley, John. Tolstoy and the Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

    This time-honored scholarly classic about the writer who wrote great novels without “ever becoming a novelist” undertakes its most memorable investigation of the novelistic peculiarities of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. While early chapters focus on Tolstoy’s Russian background and inevitable comparisons with other great novels, the volume includes a fine, if short, interpretation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection and his short fiction in the final chapters.

  • Eikhenbaum, Boris. Tolstoy in the Sixties. Translated by Duffield White. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982a.

    Originally published in 1930 as Lev Tolstoi. Shestidesiatye gody. In the first two parts of this sequel to Lev Tolstoi, Piatidesiatye Gody (“Tolstoy in the Fifties” [Leningrad: Priboĭ, 1928]) (which has still not been translated into English), Eikhenbaum shows us a Tolstoy caught between various literary schools: that of art for art’s sake, of the democratic men of letters, of the Slavophiles, and of German theories of pedagogical populism and Tolstoy caught between his pedagogical initiatives and literature. The concluding two parts of Eikhenbaum’s book (Part 3 and Part 4) are preoccupied with explaining the historical background and sources for War and Peace.

  • Eikhenbaum, Boris. Tolstoy in the Seventies. Translated by Albert Kaspin. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982b.

    This work was written in 1930 as Lev Tolstoi. Semidesiatye Gody, but published only after Eikhenbaum’s death in 1960. Tolstoy’s work on the Azbuka (ABC Book) and Russian reading books set the stage for his rebirth of interest in prose through a complex strategy of “simplification,” including the abandonment of the novel from the times of Peter the Great,

  • Leo tolstoy children

    • More Tales from Tolstoi/Biography

    1. ↑Stout.
    2. ↑A long jacket.
    3. ↑“Poslyednie Razskazui i Stat’i,” Berlin, 1894.
    4. ↑Speaking through the mouth of Prince Nekhlyudov, in “Utr Pomyeshchika,” who is Tolstoi himself.
    5. ↑As subsequently presented by Capt. Khlopov in ‘‘Nabyeg,” and by Timokhin in “Voina i Mir.”
    6. ↑On August 30th, 1869, Tolstoi wrote to a friend: “I have an indescribable enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, who has given me a succession of intellectual delights, the like of which I have never experienced before. I know not, of course, whether my opinions may not change, but I am confident at present that Schopenhauer is the greatest of geniuses . . . and I can only attribute his being so little known to the fact that the world at large is made up of mere idiots.”
    7. ↑While in the throes of composition Tolstoi demanded absolute quiet, not even his wife being allowed to interrupt him.
    8. ↑In his youth Tolstoi took some pains to cultivate an elegant and beautiful style, which is seen at its best in ‘‘Kazaki” (‘‘The Cossacks”), published in 1861. Yet there can be little doubt that his later style, so noble, simple, clear, poignant, and precise, with a constantly underlying suggestion of vast elemental power, is far more impressive.
    9. ↑Gentlemen.