Dec 24, 2009

The Death of Ivan Ilych | Author Biography

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), also transliterated as Lev or Lyof Nikolayevich Tolstoi, spent most of his life on his family estate near Moscow engrossed in his personal studies. As a youth he lived a free and restless life, but became socially active in the 1850s, fighting to improve the lot of the serfs. He later served in the army in the Caucasus, at this time working on his first novel, Detstvo (1852; Childhood). This work gained notice in Russian literary circles and was praised by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Ivan Turgenev. Tolstoy’s experience serving in the Caucasus was the...