Likened to a second Tsar in Russia and attaining prophet-like status around the globe, Tolstoy made an impact on literature and the arts, religion, philosophy, and politics. His novels and stories both responded to and helped to reshape the European and Russian literary traditions. His non-fiction incensed readers and drew a massive following, making Tolstoy an important religious force as well as a stubborn polemicist in many fields. Through his involvement with Gandhi and the Indian independence movement, his aid in relocating the Doukhobors to Canada, his correspondence with American abolitionists and his polemics with scientists in the periodical press, Tolstoy engaged a vast array of national and international contexts of his time in his life and thought. This volume introduces those contexts and situates Tolstoy-the man and the writer-in the rich and tumultuous period in which his intellectual and creative output came to fruition.

This book illuminates the historical, religious, intellectual, and artistic contexts of Tolstoy's time, both national and international.

About the Author
Anna A. Berman is a lecturer in Slavonic Studies at Cambridge University and a fellow of Clare College. Her research focuses on the nineteenth-century Russian and English novel and issues of kinship and family. She is the author of Siblings in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: The Path to Universal Brotherhood (2015) and has also published articles on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Russian opera, the relationship of science and literature, and the family novel as a genre. Her monograph, The Family Novel in Russia and England, 1800-1880, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.


Book Information
ISBN 9781108479240
Author Anna A. Berman
Format Hardback
Page Count 300
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 720g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 158mm * 27mm