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Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Birth Date: August 28, 1828
Death Date: November 9, 1910
Place of Birth: Tula Province, Russia
Place of Death: Astapovo, Russia
Leo Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828 at Yasnya Polyana,
in Tula Province, the fourth of five children. His parents died
when he was a child, and he was brought up by relatives. In
1844 Tolstoy started his studies of law and oriental languages
at Kazan University, but he never took a degree. Dissatisfied
with the standard of education, he returned in the middle of
his studies back to Yasnya Polyana, and then spent much of his
time in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In the 1850s Tolstoy also began his literary career, publishing
the autobiographical trilogy Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854),
and Youth (1857). Tolstoy's fiction grew originally out of his
diaries, in which he tried to understand his own feelings and
actions so as to control them.
Tolstoy's major work,
War and Peace , appeared between the
years 1865 and 1869. The epic tale depicted the story of five
families against the background of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
Tolstoy's other masterpiece,
Anna Karenina (1873-77), told
a tragic story of a married woman, who follows her lover, but
finally commits suicide. Tolstoy juxtaposed in the work crises
of family life with the quest for the meaning of life.
After finishing Anna Karenina Tolstoy renounced all his earlier
works and wrote Conversion (1879) to explain his doctrines.
Voskresenia (1899, Resurrection) was Tolstoy's last major novel.
Some of Tolskoy's famous books:
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