War and Peace (Illustrated Edition‪)‬

Leo Tolstoy (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) was a Russian writer who earned fame and global renown for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Writing during the late 19th century, Tolstoy lived during a literary period in which Realism flourished, and today his two novels are considered the apex of realist fiction. Tolstoy is also known for his complex and somewhat paradoxical persona, holding both moralistic and ascetic views during the final decades of his life. 

War and Peace is an unquestioned masterpiece, depicting in vivid and graphic detail the events of the Napoleonic Era leading up to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and the impact these events had on Tsarist Russia’s society. The narrative tells the tale through the eyes of 5 Russian aristocratic families. The novel was first published in its entirety in 1869, and in 2009 the magazine Newsweek ranked it the best book ever written. 

Although it is fiction, Tolstoy extensively researched history of the Napoleonic Era, as well as consulting military history, to make the book incredibly real. Tolstoy read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and combined more traditional historical writing into the form of a novel. Tolstoy even spoke with people who had lived through war during the French invasion of Russia in 1812. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace.


This edition of War and Peace is specially formatted with a Table of Contents and over a dozen images of Tolstoy and important historical characters and battles depicted in the novel.