During his decades of world fame as a novelist, Tolstoy also wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics on issues of morality, social justice and religion. These works culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Impassioned and iconoclastic, this powerfully influential work both criticizes the elitist nature of art in nineteenth-century Western society, and rejects the idea that its sole purpose should be the creation of beauty. The works of Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Baudelaire and Wagner are all vigorously condemned, as Tolstoy explores what he believes to be the spiritual role of the artist - arguing that true art must work with religion and science as a force for the advancement of mankind.

"What makes his work great is that it can be felt and understood...by anybody," said Leo Tolstoy of Chekhov's plays, which express life through subtle construction, everyday dialogue, and an electrically charged atmosphere. .

"What makes his work great is that it can be felt and understood...by anybody," said Leo Tolstoy of Chekhov's plays, which express life through subtle construction, everyday dialogue, and an electrically charged atmosphere. .

A pair of short stories about greed, charity, life and death from one of Russia's most influential writers and thinkers. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Tolstoy's works available in Penguin Classics are Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth,The Cossacks and Other Stories, The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories, What is art?, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, Master and Man and Other Stories, How Much Land Does A Man Need? & Other Stories, A Confession and Other Religious Writings and Last steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy.

"Although he feared death, he could not stop. ‘If I stopped now, after coming all this way - well, they’d call me an idiot!" A pair of short stories about greed, charity, life and death from one of Russia’s most influential writers and thinkers. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin’s 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Tolstoy’s works available in Penguin Classics are Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth,The Cossacks and Other Stories, The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories, What is art?, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, Master and Man and Other Stories, How Much Land Does A Man Need? & Other Stories, A Confession and Other Religious Writings and Last steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy.

"Although he feared death, he could not stop. ‘If I stopped now, after coming all this way - well, they’d call me an idiot!" A pair of short stories about greed, charity, life and death from one of Russia’s most influential writers and thinkers. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin’s 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Tolstoy’s works available in Penguin Classics are Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth,The Cossacks and Other Stories, The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories, What is art?, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, Master and Man and Other Stories, How Much Land Does A Man Need? & Other Stories, A Confession and Other Religious Writings and Last steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy.

Raises one of the deepest and most puzzling questions we can put to ourselves ' What is Love?' Drawing on writers and thinkers as diverse as Plato, Tolstoy, Freud and Stendhal, John Armstrong explores how our perception of love is formed by culture and history. For anyone who believes or disbelieves in love.

1910. Anna Karenina and War and Peace have made Leo Tolstoy the world’s most famous author. But fame comes at a price. In the tumultuous final year of his life, Tolstoy is desperate to find respite, so leaves his large family and the hounding press behind and heads into the wilderness. Too ill to venture beyond the tiny station of Astapovo, he believes his last days will pass in peaceful isolation. But the battle for Tolstoy’s soul will not be so simple.

One of the most accomplished authors in history, Tolstoy has inspired and influenced generations of readers. While celebrated for his masterpieces Anna Karenina and War and Peace, his short stories are just as compelling. This collection includes 'The Story of Ivan the Fool', 'Ilys', and many more of Tolstoy's finest tales, and it demonstrates the raw power and emotion of his narrative genius.

'We'll always be together, won't we?' Childhood friends and cousins Leo and Alice had imagined their whole lives playing out on their beloved Devon beach. But one night when they are teens, sitting on the sand beneath the stars, Alice tells Leo a secret that must never be shared with anybody else... then packs her bag and flees. Leo is left to build his own life - without Alice. He surrounds himself with other family and friends and on the whole is content and fulfilled. But he is left with a sense of what - or who - is missing. So decades later, when he receives a note from Alice asking if she can come home, he doesn't hesitate to agree. But as the stars align and their reunion draws near, Leo is left to consider their separation and what so many years apart means for a relationship solidified in youth and a secret which could affect the whole family.

"...not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle" - Leo Tolstoy. Oscillating between philosophical discussion and compelling story-telling, War and Peace transcends the restrictions that Tolstoy perceived in the conventional novel. Set in Russia during the Napoleonic era, Tolstoy's epic novel follows the fortunes of five aristocratic Russian families over the course of the French invasion. His timeless portrayal of familial existence against the backdrop of war is ultimately optimistic and life-affirming; with the educated, but socially awkward Count Pierre Bezukhov often giving voice to Tolstoy's own beliefs. Weaving together the historical and the personal, this powerful work of Russian literature traverses the entire scale of human life.

Explore our World CLIL Readers are graded readers from levels 1-6. They cover a range of subjects and themes, promoting Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). A World of Art (Art) takes a look at different art forms and explores the many ways artists express themselves! - What is a landscape painting? - What is pottery made of? - Where can you see a mural?

Resurrection, the last of Tolstoy's major novels, tells the story of a nobleman's attempt to redeem himself for the suffering his youthful philandering caused a peasant girl. Tolstoy's vision of redemption achieved through loving forgiveness, and his condemnation of violence dominate the novel. An intimate, psychological tale of guilt, anger, and forgiveness, Resurrection is at the same time a panoramic description of social life in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, reflecting Tolstoy's outrage at the social injustices of the world in which he lived.

This powerful novel, Tolstoy's third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, called to jury service, is astonished to see in the dock, charged with murder, a young woman whom he once seduced, propelling her into prostitution. She is found guilty on a technicality, and he determines to overturn the verdict. This pitches him into a hellish labyrinth of Russian courts, prisons and bureaucracy, in which the author loses no opportunity for satire and bitter criticism of a state system (not confined to that country) of cruelty and injustice. This is Dickens for grown-ups, involving a hundred characters, Crime and Punishment brought forward half a century. With unforgettable set-pieces of sexual passion, conflict and social injustice, Resurrection proceeds from brothel to court-room, stinking cells to offices of state, luxury apartments to filthy life in Siberia. The ultimate crisis of moral responsibility embroils not only the famous author and his hero, but also you and me. Can we help resolve the eternal issues of law and imprisonment?

Leo Tolstoy's last completed novel, Resurrection is an intimate, psychological tale of guilt, anger and forgiveness, translated from the Russian with an introduction and notes by Anthony Briggs in Penguin Classics. Serving on the jury at a murder trial, Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov is devastated when he sees the prisoner - Katyusha, a young maid he seduced and abandoned years before. As Dmitri faces the consequences of his actions, he decides to give up his life of wealth and luxury to devote himself to rescuing Katyusha, even if it means following her into exile in Siberia. But can a man truly find redemption by saving another person? Tolstoy's most controversial novel, Resurrection (1899) is a scathing indictment of injustice, corruption and hypocrisy at all levels of society. Creating a vast panorama of Russian life, from peasants to aristocrats, bureaucrats to convicts, it reveals Tolstoy's magnificent storytelling powers. Anthony Briggs' superb new translation preserves Tolstoy's gripping realism and satirical humour. In his introduction, Briggs discusses the true story behind Resurrection, Tolstoy's political and religious reasons for writing the novel, his gift for characterization and the compelling psychological portrait of Dmitri. This edition also includes a chronology, notes and a summary of chapters. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) spent his youth in wasteful idleness until 1851, when he travelled to the Caucasus and joined the army with his older brother, fighting in the Crimean war. After marrying in 1862, Tolstoy settled down, managing his estates and writing two of his best-known novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878). A Confession (1879-82) marked a spiritual crisis in his life, and in 1901 he was excommunicated by the Russian Holy Synod. He died in 1910, in the course of a dramatic flight from home, at the small railway station of Astapovo.

In this dazzling story of art and illusion, secrets and schemes, who is to be trusted - and what is real? From the internationally acclaimed author of Optic Nerve, a New York Times Notable Book 2019 'A writer who feels immediately important' Observer At a hotel in Buenos Aires, a woman checks in under a pseudonym. She wears a black fur shawl and has no luggage. She is alone. Over the coming days and nights, she tells a story, which begins with a secret shared in a local bath house, revealing art forgery and fraud on a dazzling scale. At its heart is an enigmatic genius who for years forged portraits of the city's elite, before disappearing without trace. It is a story of influence and intrigue, in which nothing is as it seems. We're not to expect 'names, numbers or dates', she cautions, but a more subtle kind of reckoning... Told in a mordant, irresistible voice and full of sharp surprises, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a captivating enquiry into what we mean by 'authenticity', in life as in art. At once poised and capricious, elegant and bold, it is a thrilling exploration of the relationships between what is lived, what is told, what is remembered, and what is real.