1 - The background to Anna Karenina

Summary

When Tolstoy began work, in March 1873, on the novel which he eventually called Anna Karenina, he already had behind him the massive achievement of War and Peace. Although it had stirred up much controversy and criticism, that vast epic of Russian life with its grand patriotic theme from the nation's history had revealed its author's incomparable powers, and great things were now expected of him, not least by himself. It was not an easy situation in which to find his way to a new subject, but Tolstoy's development never had been smooth, nor ever would be in the future; soul-searching and intellectual struggle were the stuff of his existence. He had always been something of a maverick amongst the writers of his generation, with many of whom he quarrelled – with Turgenev so bitterly that there was talk of a duel. Most had been more than ready to acknowledge him; he had early shown that he could write a new kind of realistic narrative, closely modelled on actual experiences of his own, amongst the family, in the Caucasus, at Sevastopol, which was distinctively original and vivid. It had all the imaginative life of fiction with none of the contrivance or artifice. But then his production had faltered. Tolstoy's conscience was troubled by many concerns besides literary ones: by personal moral failings, by religious and philosophical doubts, above all by the big social problems of backward Russia in his day.