Profile of the Day: Leo Tolstoy

Have you read Anna Karenina? On this day in 1828, author Leo Tolstoy was born at his family’s estate in Tula, Russia.

Image: Leo Tolstoy / Library of Congress

The Tolstoy family was a prominent family of old Russian nobility. He was the fourth child born to Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Countess Maiya Tolstaya. Tolstoy’s parents died while he was young, and so his relatives helped care for him and his siblings. Although he had experienced great loss early in his life, he came to recall his childhood fondly and wrote about it in the autobiographical novel, Childhood. While serving in the Russian army during the Crimean War, Tolstoy continued to write and composed what would become the second part of his semi-autobiographical trilogy.

Today, Tolstoy is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Some of his most acclaimed novels include War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

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