Writing to his grandmother very shortly after his marriage, Tolstoy is clearly deeply in love. The emotion comes across in his slightly disconnected way of writing. Tolstoy mixes day-to-day chat about relatives with worries about how long his happiness will last and whether his wife will be able to fit in with his family (let…
Life will become this retrospective dream…
This was one of Tolstoy’s final letters, written to his closest friend, his editor Vladimir Chertkov, less than a month before his death. Two days after writing the letter, Tolstoy left his country estate at Yasnaya Polyana where he had spent most of his life. He was unhappy with life there and his relationship with…
I got cleaned out
In 1857, Leo Tolstoy left Russia for the first time, travelling to Europe. This was in his wilder youth, long before War and Peace or Anna Karenina. Having arrived in Baden Baden, Germany, on 24 June 1857, within three days Tolstoy had lost all the money he had as well as some more he borrowed…