The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Best known for his great novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina Tolstoy remains one the most important nineteenth-century writers; throughout his career which spanned nearly three quarters of a century he wrote fiction journalistic essays and educational textbooks. The specially commissioned essays in The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy do justice to the sheer volume of Tolstoys writing. Key dimensions of his writing and life are explored in essays focusing on his relationship to popular writing the issue of gender and sexuality in his fiction and his aesthetics. The introduction provides a brief unified account of the man for whom his art was only one activity among many. The volume is well supported by supplementary material including a detailed guide to further reading and a chronology of Tolstoys life the most comprehensive compiled in English to date. Altogether the volume provides an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike.