SOFIA TOLSTOY was a talented photographer, creating evocative self-portraits long before they were artistically fashionable. Her purpose was to photograph her husband, the famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, for posterity. She beared him thirteenth children. Their marriage suffered constant instability, due to her husband's infidelities and his conception of wifely duties. She died in 1919.

CONTAINS A FORWARD BY DORIS LESSING This title contains Sofia Tolstoy's extensive diaries, which cover the years from 1862 to 1910. When she married Count Leo Tolstoy, the author of "War and Peace", husband and wife regularly exchanged diaries. Her life was not an easy one: she idealized her husband, but was tormented by him; even her many children were not an unmitigated blessing. From the state of the great writer's stomach and the progress of his work, to the fierce and painful arguments that would eventually divide the couple for ever, Sofia's diaries are both compelling and extraordinarily revealing.And in the background is one of the most turbulent periods of Russian history: the transition from old feudal Russia to the three revolutions and three major international wars. Yet it is as Sofia Tolstoy's own life story, the study of one woman's private experience, that the diaries are most valuable and moving. They are a testament to a woman of tremendous vital energy and poetic sensibility who, in the face of provocation and suffering, continued to strive for the higher things in life and to remain indomitable.