Leo Tolstoy
Russian Writer
(1828 – 1910)
Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy) was a famous Russian writer, and is commonly referred to as one of the greatest novelists of all time.  He was born on Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula region of Central Russia.  His family was part of the Russian nobility, and he was connected to some of the biggest names in Russian aristocracy.  His mother was Princess Volkonsky, his grandmothers were from Troubetzkoy and Gorchakov families, and Alexander Pushkin was his fourth cousin.  His mother died when he was two years old and his father passed away when he was only nine.  As a result, his upbringing was left to his aunt, Madame Ergolsky.  When Tolstoy was sixteen years old, he commenced his studies at Kazan University, where he concentrated on law and oriental languages.  However, his teachers described him as “both unable and unwilling to learn,” and he eventually left his studies there.  Afterwards, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana where he attempted to lead a life of simplicity and be helpful to the peasants there.  However, his lack of experience prevented him from much success, and he soon left his estate for Moscow, where he didn’t seem to find satisfaction either. 

In 1851 he went to the Caucasus, where he enlisted in an artillery unit as a volunteer of private rank.  In 1852, he completed his first novel, Childhood, which brought him immediate recognition as a great Russian writer.  In 1954 he requested to be transferred to a unit operating against the Turks in Wallachia, and later that year he joined the garrison at Sevastopol, where he wrote Sevastopol Sketches.  A short time after that he left the army and from 1856 to1861 he lived in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Yasnaya Polyana, and traveled abroad on several occasions.  Upon returning from Europe he was very disillusioned by the selfishness and materialism of the bourgeois classes, which is clearly represented in Lucerne and in Three Deaths.  In 1862 he married Sofia Andreyevna Behrs, with whom he had thirteen children.  Throughout his lifetime, Leo Tolstoy wrote some of the greatest novels of all time, including War and Peace, and Anna Karenina. 

Information from Wikipedia