Creating Anna Karenina: Tolstoy and the Birth of Literature's Most Enigmatic Heroine

The story behind the origins of Anna Karenina and the turbulent life and times of Leo Tolstoy.

Anna Karenina is one of the most nuanced characters in world literature and we return to her, and the novel she propels, again and again. Remarkably, there has not yet been an examination of Leo Tolstoy specifically through the lens of this novel.

Critic and professor Bob Blaisdell unravels Tolstoy’s family, literary, and day-to-day life during the period that he conceived, drafted, abandoned, and ...