Love and hatred : the troubled marriage of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy [WorldCat Entities]

"This volume presents a dual biography of Russians Leo and Sonya Tolstoy, offering a study of a long and stormy marriage between two remarkable individuals and the impact of their complex relationship on Leo's (1828-1910) literary work. Leo is considered a master of realistic fiction and one of the world's greatest novelists. He is best known for two long novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Leo and Sonya's marriage was marked from the outset by sexual passion and emotional insensitivity when Tolstoy, on the eve of their marriage, gave her his diaries detailing his extensive sexual past and the fact that one of the serfs on his estate had borne him a son. Even so, their early married life was ostensibly happy and allowed Tolstoy much freedom to compose his novels with Sonya acting as his secretary, proof-reader and financial manager. However, their latter life together has been described as one of the unhappiest in literary history. Tolstoy's relationship with his wife deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. This saw him seeking to reject his inherited and earned wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works. The Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution."

Love and hatred : the troubled marriage of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy