LT
1828–1910
Leo Tolstoy
Russian count who wrote as if no human interior were closed to him. His novels hold private feeling and historical force in the same breath.
Expanded realism into a nearly omniscient moral physics of family, war, and belief.
Primary works
Novel · 1878
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Anna’s affair with Vronsky is set beside Levin’s search for a livable faith in work and marriage. Two plots argue about what a life is for.
Realist novel
Novel · 1869
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
Russian families move through Napoleonic war while Tolstoy argues with the idea of the great man. History happens in ballrooms and on frozen roads.
Historical novel