Lyof (Leo) Nikolayevitch, Count Tolstoy, the greatest of Russian moral and social philosophers and novelists, owes his eminence largely to the fact that most of his works are autobiographical in nature, for introspection is his leading characteristic. Born on his father's estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in the Government of Tula, in 1828, he was graduated in law (of which he asserted he ?literally knew nothing?) from the University of Kazan in 1848. He lived on his estate until 1851, when he visited his eldest brother Nicolay, an artillery officer, in the Caucasus. Attracted by the natural beauties of the region and the free, simple life of the people, he joined an artillery regiment, and in 1853 was attached to the Army of the Danube, taking part in the defense of Sebastopol during the Crimean War. At the end of the war he resigned his commission and went to St. Petersburg. In 1857 he made a trip through Germany to Switzerland, returning with a desire to remedy the poverty of the people and the ignorance and heartlessness of modern society which he had observed. Settling down on his estate he devoted himself to the education of the peasants, making a later trip to Germany to observe the pedagogical methods employed there. Thereafter he stayed at home and devoted himself to writing, until his death in 1910. The chief books of Tolstoy are the stories, autobiographical in character, written while in the Caucasus, ?Childhood,? ?Boyhood,? and ?The Cossacks?; the vivid descriptions of the siege of Sebastopol, 1854-55, which won him world-wide fame as a realistic writer; the study of social conditions presented in the form of fiction, which he wrote on his return from Switzerland, and which he entitled ?From the Memoirs of Prince Nekhludof (Luzern)?; three chapters (no more were ever written) of ?The Decembrists,? an historical novel on the reign of Alexander I, dealing particularly with Napoleon's Russian campaign; his great epic novel, ?War and Peace,? published 1864-69, embracing not only the great events of Russian history, but also all ranks of Russian society from Czar to peasant; ?Anna Karenina,? a long and powerful novel dealing with the problems of love and marriage (published 1875-76); religious and social works, such as ?Commentary on the Gospel? (1883), ?Confession,? ?My Religion,? ?What Shall We Then Do?; short stories, such as ?The Death of Ivan Ilyitch? (1885); and the dramas, ?The Power of Darkness? and ?Fruits of Culture,? attacking respectively the spiritualistic mania prevalent in aristocratic society, and the barren artistic and literary pursuits of the so-called elite. ?The Kreutzer Sonata? (1888), a novel denouncing marriage made a great stir throughout the world, notably in America. ?What Is Art? (1898) is an exhaustive compendium and critic of views of the leading writers on the subject. ?Resurrection? (1899) is the culmination of his social philosophy, presented in the guise of fiction. While it deals in particular with sexual immorality, it is also a general arraignment of existing social institutions. Its publication would seem to have been the deciding cause of the long-threatened excommunication of Tolstoy by the Holy Synod, which was issued in 1901. Though he addressed bold letters to the Czar during the abortive revolution of 1905-6, demanding universal suffrage, representative government, land reform and other democratic measures, he was not punished by the government, evidently through fear of the people, who reverenced him as a prophet, the great teacher of social justice. In 1911, one year after Tolstoy's death, his friend, Paul Birukoff, published ?Leo Tolstoy, His Life and Work,? which was begun in 1905. It is a memoir consisting of an autobiography of early life contributed by Tolstoy, and supplemented by passages from Tolstoy's autobiographical stories such as ?Childhood? and ?Boyhood? and his ?My Confessions,? as well as of details of later life similarly gathered from diaries, correspondence and books. We present here in autobiographical form material selected from Birukoff's work relating events in Tolstoy's life down through the period of ?Youth,? where Tolstoy's own reminiscences cease to preserve the character of a continuous narrative.