Leo Tolstoy Works & Literature

About Leo Tolstoy

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, known to Americans as Leo Tolstoy, was born on September 9, 1828 to the aristocratic family, Tolstoy, of Russia. Tolstoy is known as one of the greatest novelists of all time due to the fame of his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina. His work, The Kingdom of God is Within You, emphasizes his ideas on peaceful resistance and was a major influence in the lives of Mohamed Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. As a child, Tolstoy was dubbed as “unteachable and unwilling to learn” by his educators and spent much of his youth acquiring gambling debts. His escape from the rising political pressures of aristocratic Russia gave rise to two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860. On his 1860 trip, a visit with Victor Hugo helped shape his literary and political views. He married in 1862 to a woman 16 years his junior. The early years of his marriage to Sofia Andreevna Bers were blissful and idyllic. However, their relationship deteriorated in its later years as his beliefs became progressively drastic and as he attempted to reject his inherited and earned wealth, along with all his copyrights. In the winter of 1910, his death came only after he had mustered enough strength to fully abandon his family and wealth and live the life of a wanderer. His generosity to the poor during his lifetime did not go unnoticed as thousands of peasants lined the streets at his funeral.

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Leo Tolstoy Works & Literature

About Leo Tolstoy

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