Life with a Genius: The Wife and Daughters of Leo Tolstoy

The personality of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, a writer, thinker, and public figure, evokes the liveliest interest. What was Tolstoy like in everyday life? How did his relationships with close people develop? What response did his spiritual quest find within the family circle? “Life with a Genius: The Wife and Daughters of Leo Tolstoy” is a unique publication: two previously prepared books under one cover that have become bibliographic rarities. The author is Nadezhda Gennadyevna Mikhnovets, a renowned literary scholar, doctor of philological sciences, and researcher of 19th-century Russian literature. The first book, “Love and Rebellion,” is built on the diary entries of Sofia Andreyevna from 1910, accompanied by testimonies from other family members and people close to the writer: published together, these documents illuminate the complex and dramatic events of the final months of L. N. Tolstoy’s life that preceded his departure from Yasnaya Polyana. The second book, “Three Daughters of Leo Tolstoy,” traces the destinies of Tatyana, Maria, and Alexandra Tolstoy; it reveals previously unknown pages of their biographies related not only to life in their father's house but also to the era of turbulent changes that began shortly after the death of L. N. Tolstoy. The extensive factual material, a wide range of sources, including archival ones that served as the basis for an engaging narrative-research, as well as photographs— all of this allows one to feel the atmosphere of Yasnaya Polyana life, centered around Leo Nikolayevich, and makes the publication a true gift for connoisseurs and lovers of Russian literature.