The Power of Darkness is a five-act drama that follows the downfall of the peasants Anísya and Nikíta as they succumb to a series of sordid temptations, from adultery and drunkenness to outright murder. Written in 1886 but suppressed by censors until 1902, the play is a realist portrayal of some of the darkest elements of Russian peasant life. Similar to some other late Tolstoy works, like Resurrection, the play's psychological exploration of human depravity is accompanied by a sharp socia...

Against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, five aristocratic families in Russia are transformed by the vagaries of life, by war, and by the intersection of their lives with each other. Hundreds of characters populate War and Peace, many of them historical persons, including Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I, and all of them come to life under Tolstoy's deft hand.War and Peace is generally considered to be Tolstoy's masterpiece, a pinnacle of Russian literature, and one of history's g...

What Is Art? is an 1897 philosophical treatise by Leo Tolstoy that lays out his philosophy of aesthetics. Rejecting notions of aesthetics that center around beauty, Tolstoy instead posits that art is defined by its role in transmitting feelings between human beings, and that its quality should be judged by whether those feelings align with a society's highest moral and religious ideals.Tolstoy makes a number of unconventional aesthetic judgments in the course of the book, dismissin...

Une collection des grands romans de Leon Tolstoi, geant de la litterature russe. Guerre et Paix, Anna Karenine et d'autres oeuvres majeures explorent l'amour, la guerre, la societe et la quete de sens avec une profondeur psychologique inegalee.

Fifty essential works, one sweeping introduction to the world's greatest storytellers. This first volume gathers Jane Austen's social wit, Charles Dickens's unforgettable characters, Fyodor Dostoevsky's psychological depth, Victor Hugo's romantic grandeur, Herman Melville's seafaring epic, and Edgar Allan Poe's dark imagination alongside giants from Cervantes to Tolstoy, the Bronte sisters to Shakespeare. Spanning centuries and continents, from the Spanish Golden Age to Gothic romance, Vic...

The second volume in this essential library gathers James Joyce's modernist vision, Mark Twain's American wit, Jules Verne's boundless imagination, Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure and suspense, Oscar Wilde's epigrammatic brilliance, and Bram Stoker's gothic terror alongside voices from Tolstoy to Tagore, Stendhal to Sienkiewicz. Ranging from French Enlightenment fiction to Victorian sensation novels, Russian realism to early global literature, this collection widens the canon begun in V...

Originally curated by Harvard President Charles W. Eliot as a complete liberal education in fifty volumes, the Harvard Classics gathers philosophy, science, literature, and history into a single indispensable library. Plato's dialogues and Marcus Aurelius's meditations sit alongside Dante's Divine Comedy, Francis Bacon's essays, Charles Darwin's scientific writing, and Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, tracing the foundations of Western thought from ancient Greece to the modern age. Homer...

Enter the profound literary world of one of Russia's greatest novelists. Complete Novels and Novellas of Leo Tolstoy brings together the major fictional works of Leo Tolstoy, whose extraordinary storytelling and philosophical depth have made him one of the most influential writers in world literature. Tolstoy's fiction combines sweeping historical events with deeply personal stories, creating unforgettable portraits of families, lovers, soldiers, aristocrats, peasants, and ordinary people ...

This book, newly updated, contains now several HTML tables of contents that will make reading a real pleasure!The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.This 2nd volume contains the following 50 works...

Leo Tolstoy's incendiary critique of Shakespeare takes aim at one of literature's most revered names and refuses to soften the blow. Framed by related responses from Ernest Crosby and G. Bernard Shaw, this volume turns a close reading of King Lear into a sweeping challenge to Shakespeare's dramatic genius, moral authority, and cultural prestige. Tolstoy insists that his rejection of Shakespeare came after decades of repeated attempts to admire the plays, only to find boredom, confusion, an...

Make the Christmas season brighter with a wonderful collection of stories, poems, and timeless holiday tales. The Big Book of Christmas brings together a generous selection of classic Christmas stories, festive poems, fairy tales, and seasonal writings by various authors, offering hours of holiday reading for the whole family. From snowy winter nights and cozy firesides to family gatherings, unexpected adventures, acts of kindness, and magical Christmas encounters, these stories capture th...

Discover the timeless stories that have shaped literature across generations. 50 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die Vol. 1 brings together a diverse selection of classic literary works from some of the world's most influential authors. From unforgettable romances and thrilling adventures to haunting mysteries, philosophical works, dramatic stories, and imaginative fiction, this collection offers readers an opportunity to explore a wide range of literary traditions and genres in o...