Leo Tolstoy was born to an upper-class Russian family on September 9, 1828, at the family's estate in Tula province, Russia. His father was Count Nikolay Tolstoy, a nobleman and prestigious landowner Tolstoy's mother died when he was two years old. Tragically, his father died when Leo was nine, leaving the young boy to be raised in the home of his aunts. He went to the University of Kazan when he was sixteen, studying Oriental languages and then law, but he left in 1847 without completing his degree.

In 1851 he went to the Caucasus to live with his brother, and began writing his first novel Childhood. Published in 1852, it was followed by Boyhood (854) and Youth (1856). During this time he served in the army at Sevastopol, fighting the Crimean War. His experience as a soldier in that war provided much of the experience that he drew upon in writing War...