Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was born in Tula in 1828. He was educated privately and then went on to study law and Oriental languages at Moscow. After War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy abandoned his beliefs and way of living for the simplicity of peasant life, and described the changeover in Confession, published in 1882. Several other books followed including The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Resurrection. Because of his new beliefs, family life became unbearable. He died in November 1910