Tolstoy and Tolstaya: A Portrait of a Life in Letters

Both Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828–1910) and his wife Sofia AndreevnaTolstaya (1844–1919) were prolific letterwriters.

Lev Nikolaevich wrote approximately 10,000 letters over his lifetime — 840of these addressed to his wife. Letters written by (or to) Sofia Andreevnaover her lifetime also numbered in the thousands. When Tolstayapublished Lev Nikolaevich’s letters to her, she declined to include any ofher 644 letters to her husband. The absence of half their correspondenceobscured the underlying significance of many of his comments to her andoccasionally led the reader to wrong conclusions.

The current volume, in presenting a constantly unfolding dialoguebetween the Tolstoy-Tolstaya couple — mostly for the first time in Englishtranslation — offers unique insights into the minds of two fascinatingindividuals over the 48-year period of their conjugal life. Not only do we’peer into the souls’ of these deep-thinking correspondents by penetratingtheir immediate and extended family life — full of joy and sadness, blissand tragedy but we also observe, as in a generation-spanning chronicle, avariety of scenes of Russian society, from rural peasants to lords and ladies.

This hard-cover, illustrated critical edition includes a foreword by VladimirIl’ich Tolstoy (Lev Tolstoy’s great-great-grandson), introduction, maps,genealogy, as well as eleven additional letters by Sofia Andreevna Tolstayapublished here for the very first time in either Russian or English translation.It is a beautiful complement to My Life , a collection of Sofia Tolstaya’smemoirs published in English in 2010 at the University of Ottawa Press.