Sofia Tolstaya's "My life" and Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography

[Alexandra Popoff]

Dear colleagues,

This is to announce that Sophia Tolstoy's (Sofia Tolstaya's) first 
factual biography will be published by Free Press (division of Simon & 
Schuster) in May 2010. The book is based on Sophia's volumnious memoir 
"My Life," her correspondence, her two novellas, and her notebooks -- 
the result of years of archival research at the L.N. Tolstoy State 
Museum in Moscow. For more information about Sophia Tolstoy's biography 
and the author please go to my site <www.sophiatolstoy.com>.

With best regards,
Alexandra Popoff


Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this  
> announcement by Professor Donskov.  Finally, one hundred years after  
> the death of a giant of nineteenth-century Russian literature, the  
> autobiography of the person closest to him will see the light of 
> day.   In 1998 I found it "truly astonishing" that only bits and 
> pieces of  "Moia zhizn'" had come out, adding: "When one considers the 
> vast  literature on Tolstoy that has in fact been published - 
> including  unreadable volumes by Soviet hack critics, and 
> half-literate memoirs  by peasants who had some marginal contact with 
> Tolstoy - it is  difficult to understand why much that was written by 
> Tolstoy's own  wife has been excluded from publication." (TOLSTOY ON 
> THE COUCH:  MISOGYNY, MASOCHISM, AND THE ABSENT MOTHER, New 
> York/London, NYU Press/ Macmillan, p. 201).  The very last sentence of 
> my book expressed a  fervent wish: "More than a century after the 
> creation of THE KREUTZER  SONATA, it is high time to publish 
> everything that was written by the  novella's chief victim" (p. 202).
>
> With regards to the list -
>
> Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
>
> http://Rancour-Laferriere.com
>
>
>
> On Feb 8, 2010, at 10:08 AM, SLAVIC RESEARCH GROUP wrote:
>
> Dear SEELANGers,
>
> On behalf of the University of Ottawaуs Slavic Research Group and the
> University of Ottawa Press, I am pleased to announce the forthcoming
> publication of MY LIFE (the memoirs of Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya).
>
> Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya (1844-1919) was the wife and lifelong companion
> of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910). In the last two decades of her
> life, she managed to compile a record of the events of 57 preceding
> years, from her birth to 1901, which she titled MY LIFE. An English
> edition of this previously unpublished work, edited and with a critical
> introduction and commentaries by Andrew Donskov and translated by John
> Woodsworth and Arkadi Klioutchanski, will be published in a one-volume
> hardcover edition by the University of Ottawa Press in the spring of
> 2010.
>
> MY LIFE is an intimate view of Tolstoy as a writer and a human being. It
> offers a new and better understanding of Tolstoyуs qualities as a
> husband and a father, and forms a picture of the quintessential
> Tolstoyan character which underlies his fiction. It presents new factual
> details about his personal and family life and sheds new light on old
> ones. It sets forth important facts and commentaries concerning
> Tolstoyуs life and work to which Tolstaya alone was privy, especially
> since her memoirs cover a period during which Tolstoyуs diary entries
> were sparse.
>
> It also highlights Tolstaya's accomplishments as an author in her own
> right -- as well as a translator, editor, amateur artist, musician,
> photographer, and businesswoman -- a rarity in the largely
> male-dominated world of the time. She was instrumental in the relief
> efforts of the 1891-92 famine, fundraising among Russiaуs cultural
> Оlite. She was a prolific correspondent, in touch with many prominent
> figures in Russian and Western society. Guests in her home ranged from
> peasants to princes, from anarchists to artists, from composers to
> philosophers. Her descriptions of these personalities read as a
> chronicle of the times, affording a unique portrait of late-19th-century
> and early-20th-century Russian society.
>
> MY LIFE lay dormant for almost a century before it was considered ready
> to be offered to the world in its entirety, even in its original
> language. Now its first-time-ever appearance in Russia (scheduled for
> this spring) will be complemented by a full English translation, the
> exclusive rights for which were granted by the State L.N. Tolstoy Museum
> in Moscow to the Slavic Research Group at the University of Ottawa in
> Canada.  MY LIFE may well be considered the most important primary
> document about Tolstoy to be published in many years.
>
> For further details, please visit the publisher's website at:
> http://www.press.uottawa.ca/book/687/
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Andrew Donskov, F.R.S.C., Professor and Director,
> Slavic Research Group at the University of Ottawa
>
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