Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

127 Pages·1987·5.25 MB·English

by  Anthony Thorlby

Landmarks of world literature
Leo Tolstoy
ANNA KARENINA
Landmarks of world literature
General Editor: J. P. Stern
Dickens: Bleak House - Graham Storey
Homer: The Iliad - Michael Silk
Dante: The Divine Comedy - Robin Kirkpatrick
Rousseau: Confessions - Peter France
Goethe: Faust. Part One - Nicholas Boyle
Woolf: The Waves - Eric Warner
Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther - Martin Swales
Constant: Adolphe - Dennis Wood
Balzac: Old Goriot - David Bellos
Mann: Buddenbrooks - Hugh Ridley
Garcia Mdrquez: 100 Years of Solitude - Michael Wood
Homer: The Odyssey - Jasper Griffin
Tolstoy: Anna Karenina - Anthony Thorlby
Conrad: Nostromo - Ian Watt
Camus: The Stranger - Patrick McCarthy
Flaubert: Madame Bovary - Stephen Heath
Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji - Richard Bowring
Sterne: Tristram Shandy - Wolfgang Iser
LEO TOLSTOY
Anna Karenina
ANTHONY THORLBY
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© Cambridge University Press 1987
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permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1987
Reprinted 1991
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Thorlby, Anthony
Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina.
(Landmarks of world literature).
Bibliography.
1. Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910. Anna Karenina
I. Title II. Series
PG3365.A63T48 1987 891.73'3 87-15167
ISBN 978-0-521-32819-7 Hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-31325-4 Paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2010
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Contents
Chronology page vi
Note on translations xi
1 The background to Anna Karenina 1
2 The novel
The stories and their theme 11
The composition of the real 22
Beauty 40
Love 50
Married life 65
The tragedy of Anna Arkadyevna Karenina 77
Ideas and beliefs 87
3 The critical context 105
Guide to further reading 113
Chronology
Tolstoy's life and publications Major literary events Important historical events
1828 28 August (old style, 9 September new
style) Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy born at
Yasnaya Polyana, 200 km S.W. of
Moscow
1830 Mother dies Stendhal's The Red and the Black Louis Philippe constitutional king of
France
1832 Constitutional monarchy in Belgium,
Reform Bill in Britain
1847 Inherits Yasnaya with serfs
1848 Abortive revolutions in Europe
1850 Tennyson's 'In Memoriam'
Wagner's Lohengrin
1851 Goes with brother Nikolay Tolstoy to Crystal Palace Exhibition
Caucasus; serves as a volunteer in the Coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon
army; writes Childhood
1852 Thackeray's Henry Esmond
1852-3 Campaigns in Caucasus; writes Dickens's Bleak House
Boyhood; starts The Cossacks
1854-5 Receives commission; serves at Outbreak of Crimean War
Sevastopol; writes Sevastopol Sketches
and Youth
1856 Death of Dmitry Tolstoy; Two Hussars
1856-7 Flaubert's Madame Bovary
1857 Travels in France, Germany, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal
Switzerland Trollope's Barchester Towers
1857-67 Herzen's The BelP
1859 Establishes a school at Yasnaya Polyana Darwin's Origin of Species
1860-1 Visits Germany, France, Italy, England,
and Belgium
Death of Nikolay Tolstoy at Hyeres
(October 1860)
1861 Quarrel with Turgenev Emancipation of the serfs in Russia
United Kingdom of Italy proclaimed
1861-2 Briefly a local magistrate
1861-5 American Civil War
1862 Police search Yasnaya Polyana. Turgenev's Fathers and Children
Marries Sofya Andreyevna Behrs; Hugo's Les Miserables
Shuts school
1863-9 At Yasnaya; visits to Moscow;
Writes War and Peace
1864 Goncourts's Germaine Lacerteux The First International
1866 Dostoyevsky's Crime and
Punishment
1867 Ibsen's Peer Gynt
Zola's The'rese Raquin
1869-71 Studies Schopenhauer, Greek
1870 Prussia defeats France
1871 Bad health; kumys cure in Samara. Paris Commune
1871-2 Eliot's Middlemarch
1872 Reopens school, writes ABC Book
1873-7 Writes Anna Karenina
1878 Moral crisis and conversion to a non-
supernatural Christianity
1879 Writes A Confession
1879-80 Dostoyevsky's The Brothers
Karamazov
Meredith's The Egoist
1879-83 Theological studies
1881 Appeals to Tsar to pardon Ibsen's Ghosts Tsar Alexander II assassinated
assassins of Alexander II Verga's / Malavoglia
1883 Writes What I Believe Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra
1884 What I Believe banned Huysmans's A Rebours
1885 Founds The Intermediary to supply Zola's Germinal
reading matter for peasants; writes
parable stories, 'Ivan the Fool', 'Two
Old Men', 'Does a Man Need Much
Earth?'
1886 What Then Must We Do? Death of Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge
Ivan Ilyich (story)
1886-7 Galdos's Fortunata y Jacinta
1887 On Life, Tolstoyan communities Strindberg's The Father 1887, 1897 Jubilees of Queen Victoria
formed
1888 Strindberg's Miss Julie
1889 The Kreutzer Sonata (story) Fabian Essays in Socialism
1891 Renounces his copyrights and divides Hardy's Tess of the d*Urbervilles
property among family
1891-2 Undertakes famine relief
1893 The Kingdom of God is Within You
1894 Christianity and Patriotism, Reason Kipling's The Jungle Book
and Religion, Religion and Morality D'Annunzio's The Triumph of
Death
1894-
1904 Dreyfus Affair in France
1895 Death of son Ivan. Appeals for Wilde's The Importance of Being
Dukhobors Ernest
Master and man (story) Fontane's Effi Briest
1896 How to Read the Gospels Chekhov's The Seagull
Proust's Les Plaisirs et les jours
1898 What is Art?
1899 Finishes novel, Resurrection
1900 The Slavery of our Times
1901 Virtual excommunication by Holy Mann's Buddenbrooks
Synod, Reply to the Synod*s Edict;
illness; taken to Yalta
1902 What is Religion? Gorky's The Lower Depths
Conrad's Youth ('Heart of
Darkness')
1903 James's The Ambassadors
1904 Bethink Yourselves! (against war) Outbreak of Russo-Japanese War