Ivan Ilyitch and Other Stories.

TOLSTOI, Count Lyof N. [Leo Tolstoy].

$950.00

Item Number: 139452

New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co, 1887.

First edition in English of this classic work. Octavo, original cloth lettered in gilt, patterned endpapers. Translated from the Russian by Nathan Haskell Dole with a preface by him. In near fine condition with light rubbing to the extremities. A very sharp example.

Leo Tolstoy is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time. In the early story 'Family Happiness', Tolstoy explores courtship and marriage from the point of view of a young wife. In 'The Kreutzer Sonata' he gives us a terrifying study of marital breakdown, in 'The Devil' a powerful depiction of the power of sexual temptation, and, in perhaps the finest of all, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich', he portrays the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality.