The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Yearsfifth Edition

No Englishman understood Leo Tolstoy better than Aylmer Maude. Having met the Russian master in 1888, become a regular guest at both his Moscow home and estate at Yasnaya Polyana, and translated twenty-one volumes of his work, Maude possessed the rare intimacy and linguistic mastery to illuminate Tolstoy's extraordinary life. This authorized biography, revised in 1930, covers the first fifty years: the aristocratic lineage, the turbulent childhood at Yasnaya Polyana, the years of gambling and military service, and the gradual awakening of a literary genius who would reshape the novel forever. Maude draws on personal correspondence, direct conversations, and deep knowledge of Russian society to show how the man who would write War and Peace and Anna Karenina was forged by family drama, philosophical questioning, and the vast emotional landscape of nineteenth-century Russia. For anyone seeking to understand Tolstoy's later masterpieces, this remains the essential foundation, capturing the contradictions, ambitions, and searching intelligence that drove one of literature's greatest minds.