Tolstoy's Diaries Volume 1: 1847-1894

An important and long-overdue contribution to our knowledge of Tolstoy. D. M. Thomas Sunday TimesVolume 1 of Tolstoys Diaries covers the years 1847-1894 and was meticulously edited by R.F. Christian so as to reflect Tolstoys preoccupations as a writer (his views on his own work and that of others) his development as a person and as a thinker and his attitudes to contemporary social problems rural life industrialisation education and later to religious and spiritual questions.Christian introduces each period with a brief and informative summary of the main biographical details of Tolstoys life. The result is a unique portrait of a great writer in the variegation of his everyday existence.As a picture of the turbulent Russian world which Tolstoy inhabited these diaries are incomparable - the raw stuff not yet processed into art. Anthony BurgessA model of scholarship one of the most important books to be published in recent years. A. N. Wilson Spectator Read more