The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy

1st American Edition - Stated (Random House - 1985) Very Good in a good+ dust jacket. No marks in text. Dust jacket has mild wear and is intact. Binding is tight and square. xxxv, 1043 p., 16 unnumbered pages of plates : il. ; 25 cm. . . . . . . . FROM THE DUST JACKET FLAP: Leo Tolstoys tempestuous family life makes a tragic and fascinating story -- one, however.in which most of the blame has been traditionally apportioned to his wife Sophia. This first complete English translation of her diaries casts matters in a startling new light. Sophia Andreevna Tolstoya began to keep a diary at the age of eighteen, shortly after her marriage, and continued until just a month before her death in 1919 at the age of seventy-five. Her diaries give a detailed and illuminating account of the daily events of the Tolstoys family life-the births, marriages, illnesses and love affairs of her thirteen children, numerous grandchildren and countless relatives and servants. They chronicle the comings and goings of the Tolstoyan disciples who frequented their houses in Yasnaya Polyana and Moscow, and the friendships and quarrels with some of nineteenth-century Russia's best-known and loved poets, writers, musicians, politicians and revolutionaries.…