The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy

xxxv, 1043 pp. Endpapers illustrated with Sophia Tolstoy's family tree. Her diaries give a detailed and illuminating account of the daily events of the Tolstoys' family life--the births, marriages, illnesses and love affairs of her thirteen children, numerous grandchildren and countless relatives and servants. They chronicle the comings and goings of the Tolstoyan "disciples" who frequented their houses in Yasnaya Polyana and Moscow, and the friendships and quarrels with some of nineteenth-century Russia's best-known and loved poets, writers, musicians, politicians and revolutionaries. From the state of the great writer's stomach and the progress of his work, to the fierce and painful arguments that would eventually divide the couple forever. Sophia's diaries are both compelling and extraordinarily revealing. And in the background is one of the most turbulent periods of Russian history: the transition from old feudal Russia to the serfs' emancipation and the social and political upheavals of the 1860's and 1870's that accompanied it; the assassination of Tsar Alexander II; three revolutions; three major international wars, and the 1918-20 civil war.