War And Peace

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

VOLUME I

PART I

PART II

PART III

VOLUME II

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V

VOLUME III

PART I

PART II

PART III

VOLUME IV

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

EPILOGUE

PART I

PART II

Appendix 1: - Summary by Chapters

Appendix 2: - The Three Battles

Notes

The Characters

On War and Peace

Afterword

WAR AND PEACE

COUNT LEO TOLSTOY was born in 1828 on the family estate of Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula province. He studied Oriental languages and law at the University of Kazan but left before completing a degree. In 1851 he joined an artillery regiment in the Caucasus. He took part in the Crimean War and after the defense of Sevastopol wrote The Sevastopol Sketches (1955), which established his literary reputation. After leaving the army in 1856, Tolstoy spent time in St. Petersburg and abroad before settling at Yasnaya Polyana, where he involved himself in the running of peasant schools and the emancipation of the serfs. In 1862 he married Sofya Andreevna Behrs; they had thirteen children. Tolstoy wrote two great novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), as well as many short stories and essays. He died in 1910.

ANTHONY BRIGGS has written, translated, or edited twenty books in the fields of Russian and English literature, including volumes on Tolstoy and Pushkin. A former professor of Russian at the University of Birmingham, he lives in England.

ORLANDO FIGES is the author of A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 (recipient of the Wolfson Prize for History and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) and Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia and a professor of history at the University of London.

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First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2006

Published in Penguin Books 2006

Translation, “On War and Peace,” and notes copyright © Anthony Briggs, 2005

Introduction copyright © Orlando Figes, 2005

All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828 – 1910.

[Voina I mir. English]

War and peace / Leo Tolstoy ; a new translation by Anthony Briggs ;

with an introduction by Orlando Figes.

p. cm.—(Penguin classics deluxe edition)

eISBN : 978-1-101-00383-1

1. Russia—History—Alexander I, 1801 – 1825—Fiction. 2. Napoleonic Wars,

1800 – 1815—Campaigns—Russia—Fiction. I. Briggs, Anthony. II. Title.

PG3366.V6 2006b

891.73’3—dc22 2006050335

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Introduction

by Orlando Figes

In 1951, after reading War and Peace for the twelfth time, the Russian writer Mikhail Prishvin (1873—1954) noted in his diary that he felt, at last, that he understood his life. Like all great works of art, Tolstoy’s masterpiece has the capacity, on each successive reading, to transform our understanding of the world.

On any first reading, War and Peace is bound to dazzle with its immense panorama of humanity. The whole of life appears to be contained in its pages. Tolstoy presents us with a cast of several hundred characters. Yet to each one he brings such profound understanding of the human condition, with all its frailties and contradictions, that we recognize and love these characters as reflections of our own identity.