Huffington Blog Post: Sophia Tolstoy

[Alexandra Popoff]

I am bewildered by Professor Daniel Rancour-Laferriere's remarks. 
Huffington Post is not a scholarly publication, which is widely known. 
But how can a scholar judge a new biography through an Amazon search? 
And is there really nothing new to learn about Tolstoy's wife? How about 
her memoir, which remained unpublished for a century? I learned a great 
deal from this work, beginning to research it in 2002. It took me six 
years to write the book. My sources in Sophia Tolstoy's biography 
include her memoir and the Tolstoys' correspondence, comprising of some 
1,500 letters. These sources are new to the biographers, which cannot be 
disputed. Rancour-Laferriere mentions William Shirer's Love and Hatred, 
but what does this book have to do with scholarship? Shirer's sources 
include Troyat's ancient biography of Tolstoy where his wife is 
portrayed as a shrew. Rancour-Laferriere's remarks seem dismissive to 
me, although I do hope he is not trying to undermine the value of 
independent scholarship.

Alexandra Popoff

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:

>Dear Alexandra Popoff,
>
>What you write there is certainly familiar, for you describe the woman many of us have always thought Sophia Andreevna was.  We have not all been brainwashed by Chertkov.  Furthermore, many scholars have studied the Tolstoy marriage in considerable detail (e.g., du Plessix Gray 1994, Zhdanov 1993 [1928], Asquith 1961, Feiler 1981, Smoluchowski 1988, and Shirer 1994).  In ignoring these predecessors (according to the Amazon search of your book), are you not re-inventing the bicycle?
>
>With regards to the list,
>
>Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
>
>http://Rancour-Laferriere.com
>
>
>
>On May 17, 2010, at 12:35 PM, Alexandra Popoff wrote:
>
>Dear Colleagues:
>
>Huffington Post published my blog "Sophia Tolstoy: Not the Woman You Thought She Was." Here is the link:
>
>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexandra-popoff/sophia-tolstoy-not-the-wo_b_576632.html 
>
>Your comments will be most appreciated!
>
>With best regards,
>
>Alexandra Popoff
>
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