War and Peace (Annotated with Biography and Critical Essay)

Leo Tolstoy

nov 2013 · Golgotha Press

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War and Peace begins with a scene at a party in St. Petersburg in 1805.  It is the Napoleonic era – the French general has conquered much of Western Europe and Russia is nervous.  Russia is allied with the Austrian Empire which is resisting Napoleon’s forces along its borders.

At the party the reader is introduced to the main characters including Pierre Bezukhov and Andrew Bolkonski and members of two families: Vasili, Anatole, and Helene Kuragin and Natasha, Sonya, and Nicholas Rostov.

The plot is driven by the actions of the families – Andrew and Pierre join the Russian army at the Austrian Front, Nicholas almost gambles his family’s fortune away, and when Pierre returns home, he almost kills his wife’s lover.  Andrew, missing in action on the Austrian Front, eventually returns home to find his wife has just died in childbirth.  

This annotated edition includes a biography and critical essay. 

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Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in Russia. He is usually referred to as Leo Tolstoy. He was a Russian author who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Leo Tolstoy is best known for his novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays. Tolstoy had a profound moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870's which he outlined in his work, A Confession. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas of nonviolent resistance which he shared in his works The Kingdom of God is Within You, had a profund impact on figures such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. On September 23, 1862 Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs. She was the daughter of a court physician. They had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood. Their early married life allowed Tolstoy much freedom to compose War and Peace and Anna Karenina with his wife acting as his secretary and proofreader. The Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Soviet Union. Leo Tolstoy's relatives and descendants moved to Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. Tolstoy died of pneumonia at Astapovo train station, after a day's rail journey south on November 20, 1910 at the age of 82.