Nine Stories, Including The Snow Storm (The World's Classics, No. 420)

viii, 439 pp. "These stories, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, belong to the group of writings which Tolstoy called his 'trials of the pen' and were written before his two great novels. Some of them rise directly from his own experience; A Billiard Maker's Notes, describing the temptations of gambling: Lucerne, which tells of the indignation Tolstoy himself experienced at the indifference of rich foreign tourists to an itinerant singer; and A Landlord's Morning, where the aspirations and despondency the author felt in administering his estate are vividly pictured. Similar themes are treated in Polikushka, Albert and Two Hussars. The remaining three tales are stories of nature and its place in man's life."