1904 Tolstoy Stories SNOWSTORM Hussars Death Horses Family Moscow Russia Tolsoi

Description: Illustrated Sterling Edition Works by Tolstoy 1. Meeting A Moscow Acquaintance 2. The Snow-Storm 3. Memoirs of a Marker 4. Two Hussars 5. Albert 6. From The Memoirs of Prince Nekhlyudov ; Lucerne 7. Three Deaths 8. Domestic Happiness 9. Polikushka 10. Pedagogical Articles 11. The School At Yasnaya Polyana 12. Linen Measurer By Count Lev N. Tolstoy Translated from the Original Russian and edited by Professor Leo Wiener Published By Dana Estes & Company Boston 1904 The title-page is undated. The only copyright date stated is 1904. Hardcover. Cloth Binding. Top Page Edge Gilt. 5.5" x 8.25" 471 + 417 Pages. 888 Pages in total. 116 Years Old A fairly early printing of a dozen works by Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy ( 1828 - 1910 ), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy , Russian writer and philosopher regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Tolstoy received multiple nominations for Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906, and nominations for Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902 and 1910 ( his miss of the prize is still a major Nobel prize controversy ). Illustrated Five full-page illustrations. 1. " The Snow Storm " 2. " The Game of Skittles " 3. " A Don Cossack " 4. " Peasant Children " 5. " At the Door of the School " Condition Some light wear to the binding. The spine is darkened. [see the photos ] The hinges are tight. No writing. No markings. A little foxing in the vicinity of the illustration plates. A couple of pages have a tear. The pages and illustration plates are otherwise in very good condition. 1. Meeting A Moscow Acquaintance At The Front From Prince Nekhlyudov's Memoirs of the Caucasus , 1856. Prince Nekhiludof Relates how, during an Expedition in the Caucasus, he met an Acquaintance from Moscow ,l Russia . 2. The Snow-Storm A Story. 1856. The idea for " The Snowstorm " dates back to January, 1854, when Tolstoy was lost all night in a snowstorm about 65 miles from Cherkassk , and thought to write a story about the event. It was two years later before he carried out his plan and wrote the story. "The Snowstorm" was well received among the literati of contemporary Russia . Sergey Aksakov said that the description of the blizzard the most realistic he had ever read. The narrator of the story and his manservant Alyeshka start on an evening trip by sledge from Novocherkassk in the Caucasus to a destination in central Russia. As they ride, a winter storm begins, and soon the road becomes covered with heavy, thick snow. The situation rapidly deteriorates..... 3. Memoirs of a Marker ( a.k.a. " Recollections of a Billiard-marker ") , 1856 4. Two Hussars Tolstoy's artistic powers are displayed in this novella that exposes the differences that develop from one generation to the next. Set in early nineteenth century, the work depicts the lifestyles of the Hussars and the factors behind their changing attitudes. Full of action and adventure. 5. Albert A Story. 1857. A short story. The lead character, Albert, is a young, homeless , yet brilliant, violinist. A kind man wanted to save the young homeless violinist, but after taking him home, discovers that Albert's drinking and temper threaten to destroy his entire family. 6. From The Memoirs of Prince Nekhlyudov ; Lucerne 1857 A short story describing an incident from Tolstoy's visit to Lucerne in July, 1857. Full of keen observations and a poignant conclusion. 7. Three Deaths A Story. 1859. A short story which narrates the deaths of three subjects : a noblewoman, a peasant and a tree. The noblewoman is pathetic and disgusting ; she lied her entire life and continues to lie just before death. The peasant dies calmly. Although by custom he performed the Christian rites; his religion is nature, with whom he lived. When death came, he simply looked it in the face. The tree dies quietly, honestly, and beautifully. Beautifully, because it does not lie or break; it is not scared or sorry. It lives and dies as nature intended. 8. Domestic Happiness (" Family Happiness "), A Novel. 1859. A novella written by Leo Tolstoy, first published in The Russian Messenger. The story concerns the love and marriage of a young girl, Mashechka, who is 17 years old, and the much older Sergey Mikhaylych, who is 36 and an old family friend. A passage of the book is quoted in the book and film Into the Wild ( the story of Christopher McCandless , who died in the wildness of Alaska in the 1990's ) : " I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor—such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps - what more can the heart of man desire ?" and " I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. " 9. Polikushka A Novel. 1860. A very graphic description of the life led by a servant of the court household of a certain nobleman. Tolstoy portrays the conditions and surroundings enjoyed by these servants, different from those of the ordinary or common peasants. An expose of a segment of Russian life but little written about heretofore. 10. Pedagogical Articles 1862 Several articles on Education and Schools ; Popular Education , Methods of Teaching , Culture , etc. Also, " Are The Peasant Children To Learn To Write ?" 11. The School At Yasnaya Polyana For the months of November & December, 1862. Yasnaya Polyana is the former home of the writer Leo Tolstoy. About 120 miles from Moscow. Tolstoy created a school for peasant children in one building at the estate, where he told stories to the children. Tolstoy tried to perfect his teaching systems on the children of the Yasnaya Polyana serfs. The school at Yasnaya Polyana opened in 1859. There was no schoolhouse, so at first the lessons were held in the gatehouse or Tolstoy's own home. The teachers were students from Moscow, along with Lev Tolstoy himself, and his wife Sofia. Tolstoy also traveled all around Europe to research various methods of teaching. To this day, visitors to the house at Yasnaya Polyana can see the school supplies, which were astonishingly advanced for their day, even including microscopes. All of it was ordered from abroad, and no expense seemed to be spared. The pupils studied the movements of the heavenly bodies, and the principles of physics, chemistry, mathematics and geography. Naturally, much emphasis was placed on literature. Tolstoy compiled three primers, devoting several years of his life to the exercise. The schoolbooks failed to meet the Church's standards for this genre -- rather than emphasizing church dogma, the stories capture Tolstoy's teaching style ; "the spark of life" rather than "rote learning." Ultimately, Tolstoy’s passion for teaching couldn't be reconciled with the interests of his young wife. The village teachers who came to "broaden their professional experience" at Yasnaya Polyana used to smoke in the living room - and Sofia, who very soon became pregnant, couldn't abide the smell. Tensions simmered. " Tolstoy Schools " never caught on in Russia , yet today Japan has several schools that strictly employ Tolstoy's style. 12. Linen Measurer History of a Horse. 1861. The story of a horse which philosophizes about property , society , and humanity in general. The story grew out of Tolstoy's love of horses and his critical attitude of society. The horse makes his observations logically and intelligently - more so than the humans around him. Carefully Packed for Shipment to the Buyer. Have A Look At My Many Other Books. ----------- Biographical Information: Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi ( Tolstoy ) (1828-1910) Russian Novelist and Philosopher . The great novels of the Russian writer Leo Tolstoi capture the vastness of the Russian landscape and the complexity of its people. His massive work War and Peace is regarded as a milestone in the development of the Western novel , and spread his social and moral ideals to all parts of the world. Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi was born September 9, 1828 at the village of Yasnaya Polyana, his family's estate, about 150 miles south of Moscow , Russia . He was the fourth of five children born to Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoi (died 1837) and Mariya Nikolaevna, née Princess Volkonskaya (died 1830). In 1847 Tolstoi received Yasnaya Polyana in the distribution of his parents' property. Thereafter, although occasionally absent (especially in the 1850's) for extended periods, he maintained the estate as his home. In 1862 he married Sofiya Andreevna Bers (born 1844), the daughter of a Moscow physician. Thirteen children were born of the marriage, ten of whom survived infancy. Educated and cared for by tutors, Tolstoi's early childhood was typical for his social class. He showed a gift for languages and a fondness for literature, including fairy tales , the poems of Pushkin, and the Bible - especially the Old Testament story of Joseph. After their father's death the children passed through the hands of a number of female relatives, finally (1841) being sent to five with an aunt in the provincial city of Kazan. In 1844 Tolstoi enrolled in the local university and began a notably unsuccessful career as a student. He did, however, develop a keen interest in moral philosophy. He steeped himself in the writings of Rousseau. He later listed Dickens , Schiller, Pushkin, Lermontov, D. V. Grigorovich, Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, and Laurence Sterne, especially A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy , as also having made a "great impression" on him as a young man. He left the University in 1847 without a degree and settled at Yasnaya Polyana. In 1851 he went to the Caucasus to join his brother Nikolai who was serving there in the army. He became a commissioned officer himself in 1854, serving first on the Danube and later in the Crimea. While in the army he began his literary career. His first published work, Childhood, appeared pseudonymously in The Contemporary (Russ. Sovremennik) in 1852 and was greeted by general acclaim. It was followed by a sequel, Boyhood, and a number of tales of military life. When, in 1856, Tolstoi retired from the army and went to live in St. Petersburg, his reputation as a writer was already very considerable. He took an active part in literary circles and made the acquaintance of the leading writers and critics of the day. He was much in demand in the fashionable salons of the city. Stories of various types flowed from his pen. He soon discovered, however, that he got on badly with his fellow writers and disliked his life as a literary celebrity. In 1857 he made his first trip abroad, and by 1859 he had decided to abandon literature in favor of more "useful" pursuits. He returned to Yasnaya Polyana to devote himself to the management of his estate and to the education of the children of his serfs. Thus began Tolstoi's first pedagogical interlude. He established a school at Yasnaya Polyana, and, in 1860 and 1861, he traveled extensively in order to acquaint himself with European, especially German, educational theory and practice. He resumed teaching on his return, but in 1862 he handed the bulk of the classroom duties over to others. He took upon himself the writing and publication of a periodical describing his theory of education and the pedagogical practice of his school. Twelve issues of Yasnaya Polyana appeared in 1862 and 1863. Tolstoi formulated his ideas most strikingly in "Who Should Learn to Write from Whom, the Peasant Children from Us or We from the Peasant Children?" ("Komu u kogo uchit'sya pisat', krest'yanskim rebyatam u nas, ill nam u krest'yanskikh rebyat?"). After his marriage Tolstoi became increasingly preoccupied with estate management, bent on achieving the ideal of the well-regulated life of a prosperous country squire. He published The Cossacks, a novel on which he had been working at intervals for ten years, in order to pay his outstanding gambling debts and enable him to enter into married life with balanced account books. Shortly thereafter he began his first long novel, War and Peace, a work of colossal proportions which occupied him until 1869. In 1870 Tolstoi once again turned his back on literature and began a second period of preoccupation with pedagogical work. Over the next five years he wrote and compiled materials for a complete course of elementary education. He tested them in his school and revised them. The final versions were published in 1875 as The New Primer (Novaya azbuka) and The Russian Readers (Russkie knigi diya chteniya). Tolstoi's materials eventually met with fairly general acceptance and were widely used in the nation's schools. In 1873 Tolstoi's thoughts turned once again to literature, and in the course of the next four years he 'wrote his second long novel, Anna Karenina . His work on the later parts of the novel was disturbed by ever more frequent fits of emotional distress. This condition was brought on by his inability to find an acceptable answer to the question: "What meaning can a person's life have which would not be annihilated by the awful inevitability of death?" Tolstoi became more and more convinced that the bitter truth was that life is meaningless, that there is no escape from the power of death. By the mid-1870s Tolstoi was occasionally so depressed that he entertained thoughts of suicide. By 1878, however, his "crisis" had culminated in what is customarily referred to as a "conversion" to the ideals of human life and conduct which he found in the teaching of Jesus. Tolstoi described the period of crisis and conversion in his Confession (Ispoved', 1882). The censor forbade its publication, a fate shared by many of Tolstoi's subsequent writings. Tolstoi regarded Confession as his first step along a new road in life, one which he hoped was secure from the lurking menace of the power of death. To Tolstoi the crisis and conversion meant a break with his past, especially his literary past. The convention of dividing his career into two parts (using 1878 as the year of demarcation) has a definite basis in the facts of his life, at least as these were understood by Tolstoi himself. It should not be forgotten, however, that most of the preoccupations, themes, purposes, and style of the "old" Tolstoi are present with greater or lesser clarity already in the work of the "young" Tolstoi. Confession was, more specifically, the introduction to a group of three books on religion, written in the years 1880 to 1883 and thereafter considered by Tolstoi to be his most important work. The first volume, A Study of Dogmatic Theology ( Issledovanie dogmaticheskogo bogosloviya ), is a sustained polemic against the teachings of the established church. The second, A Harmony and Translation of the Four Gospels ( Soedinenie i perevod chetyrekh evangelii ), was Tolstoi's greatest religious labor. This heavily annotated work of exegesis demonstrates both his thorough acquaintance with the French, German, English, and Russian biblical scholarship of the 19th century and his fluent command of New Testament Greek . The last part of the religious trilogy is What I Believe (V chem moya vera), a reasoned statement of Tolstoi's version of the Christian teaching. Tolstoi devoted the remainder of his life to the propagation of his religious views in publicistic essays, works of fiction, and in personal contacts with visitors and through correspondence. He dealt with a variety of subjects in his essays. On Life ( O zhizni, 1886-87) offers the most extended discussion of that dualism of body (the "animal life of man") and spirit (the "true life") which is the philosophical heart of his teaching. What Then Should We Do? ( Tak chto zhe nam delat'?, 1886) begins with a gruesomely realistic portrait of the poverty of the Moscow slums, which Tolstoy had observed firsthand while helping conduct the Moscow census of 1882. He advocates the abolition of the use of money in favor of the direct exchange of services and the disestablishment of private property rights. He condemns philanthropy as a symptom of "the willingness of the rich to do everything for the poor except to get off their backs." The Kingdom of God Is Within You ( Tsarstvo Bozhie vnutri vas, 1893) takes up two favorite themes: non-resistance to evil and anarchism. This work was among the several written by Tolstoi which had a profound influence on Mohandas Gandhi. In What Is Art? ( Chto takoe iskusstvo?, 1898) Tolstoi gives a detailed account of his aesthetic thought. He also wrote many briefer essays on such subjects as the nature of religion, vegetarianism, famine relief (in which he took an active part in the early 1890s), and on the evils of alcohol and tobacco, patriotism, military conscription, war, terrorism (as practiced both by terrorists and by governments), and capital punishment. Tolstoi resumed literary activity in the mid-1880s with a series of stories written for the popular audience (i.e., for the common people, especially the peasants). To facilitate the publication and distribution of the "Stories for the People" he and his friend and disciple V. G. Chertkov founded (1884) a non-profit publishing house which they called The Intermediary (Posrednik). Tolstoi also developed an interest in the drama and wrote his only major play, The Power of Darkness. The leading examples of Tolstoi's fiction written for the educated audience also reflect his religious teachings. These include the short novels The Death of Ivan llyich , The Kreutzer Sonata, and Master and Man. He also wrote two more novels, Resurrection and Hadji-Murad, and more than a dozen short stories. The last ten years of Tolstoi's life were marred by intermittent ill health. He devoted such strength as remained to him chiefly to the compilation of vast compendia of morally and spiritually elevating extracts from the writings of sages of various epochs and cultures. These miscellanies reflect both Tolstoi's wide reading in the world's wisdom literature and his lack of temerity in bending or adjusting the words of others to suit his own purposes. The largest of these compilations are The Cycle of Reading ( Krug chteniya, 1904-08), For Every Day ( Na kazhdyi den', 1907-10), and The Way of Life ( Put' zhizni , 1910). Although not expressly so described by Tolstoi, the miscellanies represent his version of the "perennial philosophy," the concept of which had been central to his view of religion from the early 1880s and even before. Tolstoi was the best-known Russian in the world during the last decade of his life. Tolstoian communities sprang up throughout Europe and in the United States. He was described in the newspapers as "the sage of Yasnaya Polyana" and "the conscience of humanity." His vast correspondence touched hundreds of people at a distance and many more came to visit him each year. He was a constant irritant to the authorities. His associates suffered exile and other manifestations of the government's displeasure, and he was himself excommunicated from the Orthodox Church in 1901. Most of the works written after 1880 were either banned outright or mutilated by the censor. His public stature in Russia and abroad, however, was such that his person, even in times of vigorous repression, remained inviolable. At home he was the center of a distasteful competition between his disciples, led by Chertkov, and his family, mainly his wife. Sofiya Andreevna made frequent and covert nocturnal searches of his private papers. It was the experience of lying sleepless in his darkened bedroom listening to his wife rustling through his papers in his study next door that finally prompted him to leave Yasnaya Polyana for good and embark on the journey which ended in his death. Tolstoi left Yasnaya Polyana for the last time in November 1910. He contracted pneumonia on his journey and died of heart failure on November 20, aged 82, in the railroad stationmaster's house at Astapovo (today called " Lev Tolstoi "). According to some sources, Tolstoy spent the last hours of his life preaching love, nonviolence, and Georgism to his fellow passengers on the train. The police tried to limit access to his funeral procession, but thousands of peasants lined the streets. Still, some were heard to say that, other than knowing that "some nobleman had died", they knew little else about Tolstoy. He was buried at Yasnaya Polyana , Russia. In contrast to other psychological writers, such as Dostoyevsky , who specialized in unconscious processes, Tolstoy described conscious mental life with unparalleled mastery. His name has become synonymous with an appreciation of contingency and of the value of everyday activity. Oscillating between skepticism and dogmatism, Tolstoy explored the most-diverse approaches to human experience. Above all, his greatest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, endure as the summit of realist fiction.

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