War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, considered one of the finest novels ever written, chronicles Napoleon's invasion of Russia during the early 19th century. A linked table of contents is included to navigate this massive epic.

"War and Peace" is not just a classic novel, but a real heroic epic, the literary value of which is not comparable to any other work. The writer himself considered it a poem, where the private life of a person is inseparable from the history of the whole country. Events and impressions from a peaceful life do not leave characters during the war, on the contrary, they come to life more strongly in their souls. War for them is a test of the importance and significance of man. The bearers of true heroism in Tolstoy's novel were ordinary people.

War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, published serially, then in its entirety in 1869. It is regarded as one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements.

The novel chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. Portions of an earlier version, titled The Year 1805, were serialized in The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 1867, then published in its entirety in 1869.

Tolstoy said War and Peace is "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle." Large sections, especially the later chapters, are philosophical discussion rather than narrative. Tolstoy also said that the best Russian literature does not conform to standards and hence hesitated to call War and Peace a novel. Instead, he regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel.

Tolstoy began writing War and Peace in 1863, the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. The first half of the book was written under the name "1805". During the writing of the second half, he read widely and acknowledged Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations. Tolstoy wrote in a letter to Afanasy Fet that what he has written in War and Peace is also said by Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation. However, Tolstoy approaches "it from the other side."

The first draft of the novel was completed in 1863. In 1865, the periodical Russkiy Vestnik (The Russian Messenger) published the first part of this draft under the title 1805 and published more the following year. Tolstoy was dissatisfied with this version, although he allowed several parts of it to be published with a different ending in 1867. He heavily rewrote the entire novel between 1866 and 1869. Tolstoy's wife, Sophia Tolstaya, copied as many as seven separate complete manuscripts before Tolstoy considered it again ready for publication. The version that was published in Russkiy Vestnik had a very different ending from the version eventually published under the title War and Peace in 1869. Russians who had read the serialized version were eager to buy the complete novel, and it sold out almost immediately. The novel was translated almost immediately after publication into many other languages.

It is unknown why Tolstoy changed the name to War and Peace. He may have borrowed the title from the 1861 work of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix ("War and Peace" in French). The title may also be another reference to Titus, described as being a master of "war and peace" in The Twelve Caesars, written by Suetonius in 119. The completed novel was then called Voyna i mir ( in new-style orthography; in English War and Peace).

The 1805 manuscript was re-edited and annotated in Russia in 1893 and since has been translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Albanian, Korean, and Czech.

Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted for its god's eye point of view over and within events, but also in the way it swiftly and seamlessl

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