Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian writer whose novels "War and Peace" (1869) and "Anna Karenina" (1877) are widely regarded among the greatest works of world literature and established him as a central figure of the nineteenth-century realist novel. "War and Peace," an epic account of Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars, and "Anna Karenina," a tragic account of adultery and Russian society, are noted for their psychological depth, historical sweep and vividly individualized characters. In his later decades Tolstoy underwent a profound moral and spiritual crisis that led him to renounce his earlier fiction, his wealth and his aristocratic lifestyle in favor of an ascetic Christian anarchist philosophy emphasizing nonviolence and simple living, ideas that later directly influenced Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent resistance. He died in 1910 at a remote railway station after leaving his family estate amid continuing domestic conflict.