Set in mid-19th-century Russia, this book tells the story of a married woman's passion for a young officer and of her tragic fate.

Product Description: This play by Tolstoy claims that anything more than mere sustenance leads to avarice and ruin + teetotalism = "The First Distiller." Moralizing abounds.

Product Description: “Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” --- Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich The Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s...read more

Product Description: War and Peace is well known as being one of the longest novels ever written, though not the longest. Tolstoy began writing War and Peace in the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. The first half of the book was written under the name "1805"...read more

Product Description: War and Peace is well known as being one of the longest novels ever written, though not the longest. Tolstoy began writing War and Peace in the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. The first half of the book was written under the name "1805"...read more

Product Description: Family Happiness is an 1859 novella written by Leo Tolstoy, first published in The Russian Messenger. The story concerns the love and marriage of a young girl, Mashechka (17 years old), and the much older Sergey Mikhaylych (36), an old family friend...read more

The Cossacks is a short novel by Leo Tolstoy, published in 1863 in the popular literary magazine The Russian Messenger. It was originally called Young Manhood. Both Ivan Turgenev and the Nobel prize-winning Russian writer Ivan Bunin gave the work great praise, Turgenev calling it his favorite work by Tolstoy. Tolstoy began work on the story in August 1853. In August 1857, after having reread Iliad, he vowed to completely rewrite The Cossacks. In February 1862, after having lost badly at cards he finished the novel to help pay his debts. The novel was published in 1863, the same year his first child was born. The Cossacks is believed to be somewhat autobiographical, partially based on Tolstoy’s experiences in the Caucasus during the last stages of the Caucasian War. Disenchanted with his privileged life in Russian society, nobleman Dmitri Olenin joins the army as a cadet, in the hopes of escaping the superficiality of his daily life. On a quest to find "completeness," he naively hopes to find serenity among the "simple" people of the Caucasus. In an attempt to immerse himself in the local culture, he befriends an old man. They drink wine, curse, and hunt pheasant and boar in the Cossack tradition, and Olenin even begins to dress in the manner of a Cossack.

In Petersburg in the eighteen-forties a surprising event occurred. An officer of the Cuirassier Life Guards, a handsome prince who everyone predicted would become aide-de-camp to the Emperor Nicholas I and have a brilliant career, left the service, broke off his engagement to a beautiful maid of honour, a favourite of the Empress`s, gave his small estate to his sister, and retired to a monastery to become a monk.

In this short story, a land owner named Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov takes along one of his peasants, Nikita, for a short journey to the house of the owner of a forest. He is impatient and wishes to get to the town more quickly 'for business' (purchasing the forest before other contenders can get there). They find themselves in the middle of a blizzard, but the master in his avarice wishes to press on. They eventually get lost off the road and they try to camp. The master's peasant soon finds himself about to die from hypothermia. After leaving his peasant to die, and returning to the same place he had fled from, the master attains a spiritual/moral revelation, and Tolstoy once again repeats one of his famous themes: that the only true happiness in life is found by living for others. The master then lies on top of the peasant to keep him warm through the cold night. Vasili is too exposed to the cold though and dies. Nikita's life is saved, but he loses three of his toes to frostbite.

This Squid Ink Classic includes the full text of the work plus MLA style citations for scholarly secondary sources, peer-reviewed journal articles and critical essays for when your teacher requires extra resources in MLA format for your research paper.

Product Description: Hadji Murat or alternatively Hadji Murad is a short novel written by Leo Tolstoy from 1896 to 1904 and published posthumously in 1912 (though not in full until 1917). It is Tolstoy’s final work. The protagonist is Hadji Murat, an Avar rebel commander who, for reasons of personal revenge, forges an uneasy alliance with the Russians he had been fighting...read more

Product Description: Resurrection, first published in 1899, was the last novel written by Leo Tolstoy. The book is the last of his major long fiction works published in his lifetime. Tolstoy intended the novel as an exposition of injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of institutionalized church...read more

Product Description: What is Art? What is value? What is good taste? What makes a cultured class? Tolstoy wrestled with these questions for fifteen years, and this book is the result of his fascination with the evolution of art, and its relationship with religion, commerce, and science...read more

Product Description: CHARACTERS LEONÍD FYÓDORITCH ZVEZDÍNTSEF. A retired Lieutenant of the Horse Guards. Owner of more than 60,000 acres of land in various provinces. A fresh-looking, bland, agreeable gentleman of 60. Believes in Spiritualism, and likes to astonish people with his wonderful stories...read more

Product Description: PETER IGNÁTITCH. A well-to-do peasant, 42 years old, married for the second time, and sickly. ANÍSYA. His wife, 32 years old, fond of dress. AKOULÍNA. Peter's daughter by his first marriage, 16 years old, hard of hearing, mentally undeveloped...read more

Product Description: In "The Gospel in Brief: The Life of Jesus" the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) offers his retelling of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Through his poetic and moving account of the life of Jesus, we witness the power of Tolstoy's narrative range as well as the spiritual depth of these Biblical Gospels...read more

Product Description: "Sevastopol Sketches (Sebastopol Sketches)" is a collection of three works of historical fiction in which Tolstoy draws upon his real life experiences during the Siege of Sevastopol. The titular location draws its name from that of a city in Crimea and takes place during the Crimean war...read more

Product Description: In collecting "The Cossacks", "Sevastopol Sketches", and "Hadji Murad" together in "The Cossacks and Other Stories" we find several episodes in which Tolstoy draws upon his own experiences and attempts to portray a contemporary Russian society...read more