Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography, Alexandra Popff, c. 2010. 891.7POP.
The Tolstoy family estate: Yasnaya Polyana.
- yasnaya: clear glade
- polyana?
Really the story of three people:
- Leo Tolstoy
- Vladimir Chertkov
- Sophia Tolstoy
Sophia:
- married at 18
- thirteen living children, she home-schooled
- 1886: she became Tolstoy's publisher and produced eight editions of his collected works as well as individual volumes, handling all stages of the process herself.
Leo lived to age 82; producing ninety volumes of writings, almost all written during their marriage.
born 1828; died, 1910. Died in a railway station in Astapovo.
- War and Peace: 1869
- Anna Karenina: 1878
Sophia's detractor: Vladimir Chertkov.
- b. August 1844
- d. November 1919
- age 75
Tolstoy: religious conversion in the 1880s (he would have been in his late 50s; maybe 57?
- he gave up literature;
- determined to live by the Gospels;
- renounced his former achievements and life of privilege
- Sophia could not follow him
- from the 1880s, they began to live separate lives
- but he continued to rely on Sophia for all practical affairs
- Tolstoy himself considered they were married for 35 years
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Notes From The Biography
Chapter 1
Peter Zavadovsky: a favorite of Catherine the Great
minister of education,
a senator
count of the Holy Roman Empire
his palace, Lyalichi at Ekaterinodar, in southern Russia
married Countess Vera Apraksina, later appointed a lady-in-waiting to Catherine the Great
only surviving daughter: Countess Sophia Zavadovsky
That countess: Sophia Tolstoy's maternal grandmother.
Countess Sophia Zavadovsky (the first)
- in her teens married off to an alcoholic, Prince Kozlovsky
- she left him or a common-law union with Islenev, whose estate neighbored the Tolstoys'.
- married in church, but bigamy discovered and six children declared illegitimate
- they received the improvised name: Islavin; assigned to the merchant clss
- one of the six children: Lyubov Alexandrovna Islavin -- Sophia's (#2) father.
- Tolstoy danced with this #2 Sophia who would become his mother-in-law
Sophia (#2) Islavin, age 16, married a physician of German descent, Andrei Yevstafievich Behrs, 20 years her senior; seen by family as a misalliance; medical profession looked down upon physicians as musicians, the very bottom.
Behrs was traveling to Turgenev's estate when he was called to treat Sophia's mother, Lyubochka, and proposed to Sophia.
The tie between Tolstoy and Turgenev began.
Then the story of the Behrs.
Andrei Behrs -- Sophia (#2)'s father.
Andrei was four when Napoleon invaded and the family fled the burning Moscow.
Andrei and brother Alexander, very bright. Medical degrees and subsequently many awards nad noble titles. Fourteen and fifteen when they entered medical school.
The Behrs -- many, many stories.
Sophia (#3) -- later married to Leo Tolstoy -- was born August 22, 1844; the second of thirteen children, just as she later had thirteen children. Again, Sophia's mother: Lyubov Behrs.
Leo Tolstoy, a casual guest.
1854: Leo Tolstoy left for the Crimean War.
At age 11, major events in Sophia's lifee.
Sophia and Liza: schooling.
Late teens, Lyubov Alexandrovna took "the girls" to their grandfather's estate and the neighboring Yasnaya Polyana. Their Sophia re-lived some of her parents' / family history.
Sophia entered Yasnaya Polyana as a mistress. The sisters and their maid lodged at Tolstoy's house.
At Ivitsy, their grandfather's estate, Tolstoy unexpectedly turned up during a dance.
Close, but did not propose at Ivitsy.
August 28, 1862: Tolstoy, 32nd birthday.
September 16, 1862, Tolstoy proposed. She, 18, he 32.
Liza mistakenly assumed to be the bride.
Bolshoi Theatre, Othello. American black actor, Ira Aldridge. First black in the world to play Othello.
Chapter 2
Married September 23, 1862.
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