Author:  Leo Tolstoy  

Publisher: Oxford University Press, London

Collection: The World’s Classics

Pages: 439 

Year: 1966

Condition: Used. Very good condition. Hardcover.

These stories, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, belong to the group of writings which Tolstoy called his “trials of the pen” and were written before his two great novels. Some of them rise directly from his own experience; A Billiard-Marker’s Notes, describing the temptations of gambling; Lucerne, which tells of the indignation Tolstoy himself experience at the indifference of rich foreign tourists to an itinerant singer; and A Landlord’s Morning, where the aspirations and despondency the author felt in administering his estate are vividly pictured. Similar themes are treated in Polikúshka, Albert and Two Hussars. The remaining three tales are stories of nature and its place in man’s life.

(Reproduced from the front flap)

Contents: A Billiard-Marker’s Notes; The Snow Storm; Two Hussars; A Landlord’s Morning; Lucerne; Albert; Three Deaths; Polikúshka; Strider: The Story of a Horse.