Leo Tolstoy  (1828-1910) The Death of Iván Ilých LINKS Tolstoy Library ftp://users.aol.com/Tolstoy28/tolstoy.htm This online library, "dedicated to the collection and dissemination of electronic text material related to the life and work of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy," contains links to biographies, works by Tolstoy, and criticism and analysis. BIOGRAPHY Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)  Born in Russia into a family of aristocratic landowners, Tolstoy cut short his university education and joined the army, serving among the primitive Cossacks, who became the subject of his first novel, The Cossacks (1863). Tolstoy left the army and traveled abroad but was disappointed by Western materialism and returned home. After a brief period in St. Petersburg, he became bored with the life of literary celebrity and returned to his family estate. There he wrote his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Around 1876, Tolstoy experienced a kind of spiritual crisis that ultimately led him to reject his former beliefs, way of life, and literary works. Henceforth, he adopted the simple life of the Russian peasants, rejecting orthodoxy in favor of a rational Christianity that disavowed private property, class divisions, secular and institutional religious authority, as well as all art (including his own) that failed to teach the simple principles he espoused.