The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: (Adapted by Joseph Cowley)
About this ebook
He began the study of law in 1844, but was a poor student and soon dropped out. In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he joined the army in the Caucasus. It was about this time he began writing.
Of his early work, perhaps the best known are the three novels of his autobiographical trilogy, Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth (1857). They portray his happy childhood and young manhood.
Tolstoy married Sophia Behrens, 16 years his junior, in 1862. It was a marriage marked by sexual passion and emotion. Even so, their early married life was ostensibly happy and allowed Tolstoy much freedom to write.
Tolstoy died in 1910, and today is considered one of the giants of Russian literature. His most famous works include the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina and novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Kreutzer Sonata.
About the author
JOSEPH COWLEY, born on October 9, 1923, graduated from Columbia University in 1947. He interrupted his academic career to serve two and a half years with the Army Air Force during World War II. The last months of service were spent overseas as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star.
He received his M.A. from Columbia in 1948 and taught English at Cornell before entering sales. Most of his career was spent writing and editing material on sales and management for The Research Institute of America. Taking early retirement in 1982 to write fiction, he moved to Lebanon, OH, with his wife Ruth to be near the eldest of their four children and two existent grandchildren.
Joseph Cowley is the author of an anthology The Best of Joseph Cowley; the novels The House on Huntington Hill, Landscape With Figures, Dust Be My Destiny, Home by Seven, and The Chrysanthemum Garden; and the plays The Stargazers, Twin Bill, and A Jury of His Peers; two collections of shorter fiction Do You Like It and Other Stories and The Night Billy Was Born and Other Love Stories; and two non-fiction books John Adams: Architect of Freedom, and The Executive Strategist, An Armchair Guide to Scientific Decision-Making. (with Robert Weisselberg)
He recently abridged and adapted Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthornefor ESL students and others interested in an easier read of the classics. The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy is the latest in this serious of Classics Condensed by Cowley to be published in this series.
His articles have appeared in trade and science journals, and his short stories in The Maryland Review, Prairie Schooner, New-Story, Ohio Short Fiction, and other literary journals and anthologies. He has plans for a book on Mathematical Concepts, another on quantum reality called Down the Rabbit Hole, and a third called George Moore and the French connection. For the present, however, his plans call for continuing to adapt the classics for ESL students.
He is listed in a number of reference volumes, among them: Who’s Who, International Who's Who of Writers and Authors, Who's Who in the World, Strathmore's Who's Who, Cambridge Blue Book, and 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century. Among the organizations he is or has been associated with are The Authors Guild, Mensa, and Great Books.
