Leo Tolstoy

Considered one of the world's greatest novelists, Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy is famous especially for the 19th century classics War and Peace (1865-69) and Anna Karenina (1877-78). Although he was born into nobility, Tolstoy spent much of his life as a champion of Russia's peasant class, notably in the field of education. He began his literary career in the 1850s, publishing a trilogy about his own life: Childhood (Detstvo, 1852), Boyhood ( Otrochestvo, 1854) and Youth (Yunost', 1857). Tolstoy served in the Russian army during the Crimean War, and his book Sevastopol Sketches (Sevastopol'skie Rasskazy, 1855-56) was well-received in literary circles and praised for its realistic depiction of war. After travelling throughout Europe, Tolstoy returned to the family estate and devoted himself to raising a family and writing his great psychological novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. From the 1880s until his death, he devoted himself to more spiritual and philosophical matters, writing several essays on ethics and morals and coming to terms with his own Christian conversion (described in 1879's Confessions). His other works include the novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1884) and the novel Resurrection (1899-1900).

Extra credit: In 1910, at the age of 82, Tolstoy left his home with his youngest daughter, Alexandra, and hopped a train for an unspecified destination. He fell ill along the way and ended up dying a few days later at a railroad stationmaster's house in Astapovo.