Leo+Tolstoy



Wendy Xiao

Ms. Chase

ENG 322G

6 April 2009

Annotated Bibliography //For my English project, I will be researching the life and works of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. To do so, I will examine sources pertaining to his early life, his most famous novels and fictional works, his religious and political beliefs and most of all, what differentiates him from other great artists. I will then compile a PowerPoint presentation which discusses those aspects of Tolstoy's life and highlights the significance of his writings. Tolstoy was born into a boisterous life in czarist Russia in 1828 and wrote until his death// //in 1910. Among his most famous works are "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina."//

Crankshaw, Edward. __Tolstoy: the Making of a Novelist__. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974.

Crankshaw introduces Tolstoy as a writer of noble birth and addresses his boyhood, youth, and writings through the turbulence of war. The characters in Tolstoy's //War and Peace// were derived from the serfs at his own estate at Yasnaya Polyana, and Crankshaw elaborates on the many family figures that played a role in shaping Tolstoy's childhood and fiction. Tolstoy was the youngest of four sons, and his mother passed two years after his birth. A cousin of his father, Tatyana Ergolsky took charge of the children until Tolstoy's father died in 1837, leaving him under the care of Aunt Alexandra Osten-Saken. She was a major religious influence on young Tolstoy. Three years later in 1840, Aunt Alexandra died and Tolstoy was transferred to another aunt, Pelageya Yushkov in Kazan, Russia. Years later upon return to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy began diary entries which were the foundations for his fiction writings and in a very real sense, his autobiography. His golden years peaked within the first decade of his marraige to Sofia Andreyevna Behrs in which his creative life richened and his personal life thrived. It was in this time frame that //War and Peace// and //Anna Karenina// were written, both of which were masterpieces containing pieces of Tolstoy's disguised biography. Tolstoy's family continuously grew, and the royalties from his book sales made him an extremely rich man.

"Leo Tolstoy - Biography and Works." __The Literature Network: Online classic literature, poems, and quotes. Essays & Summaries__. 12 Apr. 2009 eeeee .

The literature network accounts of Tolstoy's early childhood, boyhood, youth, and last years. Tolstoy was born into a long line of Russian nobility, raised without a mother, and revered his oldest brother Nikolay. He attended the University of Kazan, where he studied literature, but left after three years without obtaining a degree. Shortly after, Nikolay became an officer of the Caucasian army, inspiring Tolstoy to enlist. Tolstoy began his first fiction writings and continued to write throughout the Crimean War. He married Sofia Andreyevna Behrs and raised thirteen children, while composing what would be some of his most famous works. Leo Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910 and was buried near the Stary Zakaz Wood on the Yasnya Polyana estate where Nikolay once told him one could find the secret to happiness and the end to all suffering.

Tolstoy, Leo. __Confession__. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.

//Confession// is Tolstoy's own autobiographical account of his spiritual crisis, shifting from his central focus on the aesthetic to the religious and philosophical. He writes of the search for answers to the profound questions: "What will come of my life?" and "What is the meaning of life?", and discusses different attempts to find answers on the examples of science, philosophy, eastern wisdom and the opinions of his fellow novelists. Not having found an acceptable solution in any of these, Tolstoy recognizes the deep religious convictions of ordinary people as containing the key to true answers. However, he also finds "a great deal of superstition mixed with the Christian truths" and rejects some customs of the Christian church. Wilson, A. N. __Tolstoy: A Biography__. Boston: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Wilson chronologically orders Tolstoy's life and times from his birth on August 28, 1828, to his death in 1910. It is as much a biography of Tolstoy as it is a biography of Russia from the Decembrist Revolt in 1825 to the crises in the year of Tolstoy's death. Although Tolstoy was born into one of the very highest of Russian social rank, he lived among the peasantry for the greater part of his life and never exercised his rights as a grand courtier, or diplomat or senior army officer. He only exercised his freedom to write and lived a fairly isolated life in the country, hating the intellectuals of St. Petersburg and despising the rich houses of Moscow. Tolstoy managed to denounce the cruelty of the army, the unlawfulness of war itself, the inequality of the social heirarchy, the squalor and oppression of the urban poor, the destitution of the starving, and the criminality of censorship in his many writings and stood for something much bigger than just himself or his ideas. As long as Tolstoy kept writing, huge numbers of Russians believed in the prospect of individual liberty, and it was for this reason that upon Tolstoy's death, demonstrations and riots spread across Russia, and thousands of people followed his coffin to its place of burial.