Childhood

Leo Tolstoy published Childhood at twenty-three, anonymously, from an artillery post in the Caucasus — and the great editor Nekrasov printed it at once. Ten-year-old Nikolenka is carried from the country to Moscow, and everything of importance happens in the small print of a boy's days: the tutor's temper, the hunt, his mother's hands at the piano, the first lie he ever tells. All the powers of the mature novelist are already here in miniature. This edition presents the complete and unabridged translation, newly typeset and illustrated with 30 full-page color plates, Serov's and Savrasov's among them.