Resurrection: A Novel.

TOLSTOY, Leo.

Item Number: 124103

London: Francis Riddell Henderson, 1900.

First English edition of Tolstoy’s final novel which outsold both Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Octavo, original cloth with gilt titles to the spine and front panel, with thirty-three tissue-guarded illustrations by Pasternak including frontispiece. Translated by Louise Maude. In very good condition. A nice example.

The last major novel published during Tolstoy's lifetime, Resurrection is a fervent exposition of the injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of the institutionalized church. The novel was an unfinished draft which Tolstoy (age 71) began 10 years earlier as the "Konevskaya story". In August 1898 he urgently decided to finish, copyright and sell it to aid the emigration of the most persecuted third of the pacifist Spiritual Christian Dukhobortsy from Russia to Canada. He completed it in December 1899 and the eagerly awaited full-length novel (as opposed to the many novellas Tolstoy had recently published) outsold both Anna Karenina and War and Peace.