War and Peace is a vast epic centred on Napoleon's war with Russia. While it expresses Tolstoy's view that history is an inexorable process which man cannot influence, he peoples his great novel with a cast of over five hundred characters. Three of these, the artless and delightful Natasha Rostov, the world-weary Prince Andrew Bolkonsky and the idealistic Pierre Bezukhov illustrate Tolstoy's philosophy in this novel of unquestioned mastery. This translation is one which received Tolstoy's approval.

Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Introduction and Notes by E.B. Greenwood, University of Kent. Anna Karenina is one of the most loved and memorable heroines of literature. Her overwhelming charm dominates a novel of unparalleled richness and density. Tolstoy considered this book to be his first real attempt at a novel form, and it addresses the very nature of society at all levels,- of destiny, death, human relationships and the irreconcilable contradictions of existence. It ends tragically, and there is much that evokes despair, yet set beside this is an abounding joy in life's many ephemeral pleasures, and a profusion of comic relief.

This powerful novel, Tolstoy's third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, called to jury service, is astonished to see in the dock, charged with murder, a young woman whom he once seduced, propelling her into prostitution. She is found guilty on a technicality, and he determines to overturn the verdict. This pitches him into a hellish labyrinth of Russian courts, prisons and bureaucracy, in which the author loses no opportunity for satire and bitter criticism of a state system (not confined to that country) of cruelty and injustice. This is Dickens for grown-ups, involving a hundred characters, Crime and Punishment brought forward half a century. With unforgettable set-pieces of sexual passion, conflict and social injustice, Resurrection proceeds from brothel to court-room, stinking cells to offices of state, luxury apartments to filthy life in Siberia. The ultimate crisis of moral responsibility embroils not only the famous author and his hero, but also you and me. Can we help resolve the eternal issues of law and imprisonment?

In 1872 the mistress of a neighbouring landowner threw herself under a train at a station near Tolstoy's home. This gave Tolstoy the starting point he needed for composing what many believe to be the greatest novel ever written. In writing Anna Karenina he moved away from the vast historical sweep of War and Peace to tell, with extraordinary understanding, the story of an aristocratic woman who brings ruin on herself. Anna's tragedy is interwoven with not only the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin but also the lives of many other characters. Rich in incident, powerful in characterization, the novel also expresses Tolstoy's own moral vision. `The correct way of putting the question is the artist's duty', Chekhov once insisted, and Anna Karenina was the work he chose to make his point. It solves no problem, but it is deeply satisfying because all the questions are put correctly. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

I don't understand it; I don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars. How is it that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need it? Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, are intimately connected with the national history that is played out in parallel with their lives. Balls and soirees alternate with councils of war and the machinations of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles with everyday human passions in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed. The prodigious cast of characters, both great and small, seem to act and move as if connected by threads of destiny as the novel relentlessly questions ideas of free will, fate, and providence. Yet Tolstoy's portrayal of marital relations and scenes of domesticity is as truthful and poignant as the grand themes that underlie them. In this definitive and highly acclaimed Maude translation, Tolstoy's genius and the power of his prose are made newly available to the contemporary reader. In addition this edition includes a new introduction by Amy Mandelker, revised and expanded notes, lists of fictional and historical characters, a chronology of historical events, five maps, and Tolstoy's essay 'Some Words about War and Peace'.

Introduction by John Bayley

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"In the Days of Serfdom" and Other Stories, originally published in 1911, presents in miniature themes developed in Tolstoy's longer works War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The compelling stories in this collection have largely been ignored by contemporary scholars and teachers because of their general unavailability. Available once again, the stories reveal new thematic and stylisitic dimensions to Tolstoy's oeuvre. While not all of the stories deal with actual serfdom, they all address the legacy of serfdom, of choicelessness, in Tolstoy's Russia. These stories are also thoroughly modern, concerned as they are with the market economy, changing values, and women's roles in society. Artistically and historically significant, they constitute ethical and spiritual questionings that deal with lives out of control, with characters making sense of the experience of living.

'How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories' Sharon Cameron in her preface to The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories This second volume of Tolstoy's shorter fiction, selected by the critic Sharon Cameron, contains 'Family Happiness', 'The Devil' and 'The Kreutzer Sonata', three of Tolstoy's unhappy-marriage stories as well as 'Father Sergius', a story of a loss of identity in ambitious pursuit of holy virtue and 'Master and Man'. Tolstoy's antidotes to delusion, fear, jealousy and even madness have an ethical thread pulled through the fabric of different themes and genres. This riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.

'How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories' Sharon Cameron in her preface to The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories Tolstoy wrote in many genres for different audiences. In this, the first of three volumes of his shorter fiction chosen and introduced by the critic Sharon Cameron, we see works originally written for children, like 'God Sees the Truth But Waits', and 'A Prisoner in the Caucasus'. They stand alongside others which show his range and accomplishment, including an early story based on his experiences in the Crimean war, 'Sevastopol in May', and the visceral intensity of one of his greatest works, 'The Death of Ivan Ilych'. This riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.

'How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories' Sharon Cameron in her preface to Hadji Murad and Other Stories This, the third volume of Tolstoy's shorter fiction concentrates on his later stories, including one of his greatest, 'Hadji Murad'. In the stark form of homily that shapes these later works, life considered as one's own has no rational meaning. From the chain of events that follows in the wake of two schoolboys' deception in 'The Forged Coupon' to the disillusionment of the narrator in 'After the Ball' we see, in Virginia Woolf's observation, that Tolstoy puts at the centre of his writing one 'who gathers into himself all experience, turns the world round between his fingers, and never ceases to ask, even as he enjoys it, what is the meaning of it'. The riverrun edition reissues the translation of Louise and Aylmer Maude, whose influential versions of Tolstoy first brought his work to a wide readership in English.