“Everyone thinks of changing the world, 

but no one thinks of changing himself.”

-Leo Tolstoy

Part I: Basics

This pathfinder will enable college students or any adult academically interested in Leo Tolstoy, his thoughts, and his writings, to have a collection of reference resources at hand. Provided here are several different styles or formats of information regarding this Russian figurehead of literature. The books listed are of a heavy academic nature and are intended for serious study. Journal articles provide a more succinct, yet substantial, presentation of information. The online resources tend to be more beginner-level aids that yield biographical information, synopses of Tolstoy’s writings, or even video footage of his last days.

Part II: Written Resources

Reference Books

Cambridge Companions are well known for their extensive analyses of authors and their works, and Donna Tussing Orwin’s Companion to Tolstoy is no exception. Beginning with a standard chronology, Orwin continues with an in-depth analysis of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection. She then moves on to review Tolstoy’s genre styles: popular literature, the long short story, and Tolstoy’s works on the stage. The last section of Orwin’s Companion details various general topics within Tolstoy’s writings; for example, style and theme; history and autobiography; women, sexuality, and the family; courage; and aesthetics. Orwin also includes a “Guide to further reading,” as well as an index to Tolstoy’s works and characters. This Companion is a considerable asset to Tolstoy’s primary sources.

Orwin, D.T. (2002). The Cambridge companion to Tolstoy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Written by Justin Weir, a Harvard University professor of Slavic language and literature, Leo Tolstoy and the Alibi of Narrative is a work of literary criticism that seeks to dissect Tolstoy’s style of writing and portrays him as an author who writes in order to have an “alibi,” or an excuse for writing as opposed to doing. Leo Tolstoy is well-known for his intricate and, at times, convoluted narrative style. According to one translator of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, many interpreters have found Tolstoy’s style to be particularly difficult to translate while yet maintaining the “rhythms, tone and temperament” of the original Russian (Pevear, 2000). This book offers a six-part look at Tolstoy’s different story themes (authentic or legitimate lives, love and suspicion) and thoughts regarding his authorship, including notes and an index at the end.

Sources Consulted:

Pevear, R. (2000, December 15). MLA: Being true to the Russian master. Retrieved April 22, 2013, from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/158919.article

Weir, J. (2011). Leo Tolstoy and the alibi of narrative. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Journal Articles

"The Reader-Brand: Tolstoy in England at the Turn of the Century"

Gwendolyn Blume introduces the concept of the “reader-brand:” that of portraying a certain type of reader who may be interested in a particular book. For example, she shows that in England at the turn of the twentieth century, the reader-brand of the “Tolstoyan reader” was that of “the upper classes and [those] with a high level of education.” She also notes that foreign works are generally valued and/or respected more than familiar works: French translations of Anna Karenina were preferred over English translations of the same title. Blume highlights the fact that since fluency in French was likely a privilege held by relatively few people, these Russian novels (first translated only into French) were widely accepted as “elite.” She documents the merging of two reader-brands – those of Tolstoy’s religious readers and those of Tolstoy’s fiction readers. This phenomenon shows the power of author-branding in conjunction with reader-branding, and emphasizes the broad appeal of Tolstoy to varied readers.

Blume, G.J. (2011). The reader-brand: Tolstoy in England at the turn of the century. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 53 (3), 320-337. Retrieved April 29, 2013, from Project MUSE.

"Life in the Present: Time and Immortality in the Works of Tolstoy"

Sarah Hudspith analyzes Tolstoy’s concept of immortality: escape from the fear of death, or “an eternity in the present” in this critical essay. She believes that this fixation on time and immortality bridges the gap between Tolstoy’s works of fiction and non-fiction. Hudspith utilizes several examples from Tolstoy’s writings, such as Ivan Ilyich from The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata’s Pozdnyshev, and Nekhliudov from Resurrection to support to her argument. She posits the theory that not only does Tolstoy’s predilection for immortality merge his fiction with his non-fiction; it indeed threads his later works together as a cohesive collection of thoughts.

Hudspith, S. (2006). Life in the present: Time and immortality in the works of Tolstoy. Modern Language Review 101 (4), 1055-1067. Retrieved April 29, 2013, from Academic Search Premier. 

"The Roguish Tolstoy"

Jeff Love writes a critical essay defining Leo Tolstoy as a roguish author. Love argues that although Tolstoy declared War and Peace to be an epic, not a novel, in actuality the book in question may truly be more of a novel than Tolstoy would be likely to admit. Love also believes that Tolstoy himself writes in an attempt to argue that fiction authors can recount history perhaps in a more holistic sense than historians themselves. Jeff Love proceeds to prove in detail what he states succinctly at the beginning of his essay. He accomplishes this by breaking down a chapter of War and Peace (chapter seven of Book Three) and walking the reader through his dissection of Tolstoy’s “narrative cunning.” Love takes the view that Tolstoy indeed employs narrative authority by addressing current issues or disagreements by “arguing through fictional characters” and presents an extremely cohesive argument for the case of Tolstoy’s intriguing style.

Love, J. (2011). The roguish Tolstoy. Tolstoy Studies Journal 23, 34-43. Retrieved April 28, 2013, from Literature Resource Center. 

Additional Resource

Annotated Bibliography

This bibliography compiled by Joseph Schlegel (University of Toronto) and Irina Sizova (Gorky Institute of World Literature, Moscow) is an invaluable reference resource for the Tolstoy student and offers fifteen pages of information. It compiles articles related to Tolstoy, his works and ideas, and even themes from some of his works and offers a brief synopsis of the thrust of the article. For example, an article by Mark Conliffe entitled “Natasha and Kitty at the Bedside: Care for the Dying in War and Peace and Anna Karenina” that examines Tolstoy’s preoccupation with death, or one by Randall Poole, “Religious Toleration, Freedom of Conscience, and Russian Liberalism,” that explores Tolstoy’s non-fiction writings and ideas. The list includes several non-English sources, such as German, French or Russian articles. This bibliography is a definite must-have for the serious student.

Schlegel, J. & Sizova, I. (2012). Annotated bibliography for 2011-2012. Tolstoy Studies Journal 24, 88-102. Retrieved April 29, 2013, from Literature Resource Center.   

Part III: Online Resources

Deep Spirits. (2013). http://www.deepspirits.com/great-people/leo-tolstoy/

Deep Spirits looks at the mind and concepts of “Great People,” including thinkers, artists, revolutionaries, mystics, and religious figures. This resource offers a biography of Leo Tolstoy, but delves into his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church, his “spiritual crisis,” his friendship with Ghandi, his moral philosophy and views of anarchism, and his “dream of a unified mankind on the observance of the supreme law of love.” Also included on this website are two videos; one of Tolstoy reading from one of his own works, and one detailing his last years. Linked from the Tolstoy homepage is a page of Tolstoy’s quotes.

Doukhobor Genealogy Website. (2013). http://www.doukhobor.org/Tolstoy-Freedomites.htm

This website is unique in that it is not specifically a website about Tolstoy or his works. This site is primarily a genealogical tool for Doukhobors, or Sons of Freedom, in Canada. The website offers a lengthy article by Svetlana A. Inikova that details Tolstoy’s literary foundation of the Doukhobors. Inikova chronicles the growth of this intellectual and religious movement, from Tolstoyans in Russia to Freedomites in Canada. Tolstoy supported this group because of their emphasis on truth and love: ideas that he held dear in his own philosophy. This website proves interesting to see the connection between Tolstoy’s philosophical writings, fictional writings, and a real-life group of people who used his ideas.

The Free Library. (2013). http://tolstoy.thefreelibrary.com/

The Free Library is an excellent website that offers a complete biographical sketch of Leo Tolstoy. One of the highlights of this website is that it provides links to free versions of his most famous works, and a few lesser-known works as well. Anna Karenina, Father Sergius, Master and Man, and War and Peace are all available for reading in their entirety online at no cost from this website. For a student who does not have time to read these epic novels, this free access allows him to at least become familiar with the principal characters of each novel. At the bottom of the page, The Free Library gives a list of recommended sites for additional or supplementary information about Leo Tolstoy.

The Literature Network. (2013). http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/

The Literature Network offers an extended biography of Leo Tolstoy, written by C.D. Merriman. Also included on the left sidebar are links both to his works and also to short synopses of these works, including fiction and non-fiction, plays, short stories, and essays. The Literature Network also makes Barlett's Familiar Quotations available in an online searchable format, so you can enter the author's name and find a list of famous quotes from his/her works. Other tabs include quizzes, related links and articles, and even forum discussions of the author and/or his works. The homepage for Tolstoy offers a search bar in which you can type keywords and the website will return a list of search results of where those words or phrase are found within Tolstoy’s writings.

Open Culture. (2013). http://www.openculture.com/2010/11/the_last_days_of_leo_tolstoy_a_century_ago.html

Open Culture provides “free cultural and educational media” online. This particular video clip details video footage of the last days of Leo Tolstoy. This footage depicts Tolstoy as a noble born individual sharing in the work of the peasants. Not only does it show Tolstoy on his deathbed at the train station of Astapovo, it points out the mourning of the public at large upon hearing of his death. This video highlights one of the great controversies of Tolstoy’s life: that he was born a noble and lived the pampered life of an aristocrat, and yet found himself living as a peasant during his last days. As the footage shows, the public was distressed at the death of this aristocrat who championed their cause.