Leo Tolstoy

Russian, 1828–1910

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was a Russian novelist widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in world literature. War and Peace, his epic chronicle of Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars, and Anna Karenina, his tragic novel of love and society, are considered two of the finest novels ever written. In later life, Tolstoy became a moral philosopher whose ideas on nonviolent resistance influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.