Work While Ye Have the Light. Translated from the Russian by E. J. Dillon, Ph.D

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.