Boyhood, Adolescence, and Youth

Late in his life, Count Leo Tolstoy recalled his years writing short stories and his two towering masterpieces, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, as a trifling application of his mind and soul. While he was writing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy was beset by spiritual turmoil, which he later described in A Confession. He abandoned orthodox faith and began writing essays in which he emphasized love and personal knowledge of God as the foundations of Christian ethics; his most notable fiction from this later period is the short story The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Following a long estrangement from his family, Tolstoy left his estate and died at a train station while on his way to a monastery.