Tolstoy Completes War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy began composing War and Peace in 1863, the year after he married Sophia Behrs, while living on his country estate. Intent on exploring the Napoleonic period in Russia, he sought out diaries, domestic records, and family documents from the early nineteenth century. He soon discovered that written accounts detailing private Russian life from that era were scarce, compelling him to reconstruct the domestic world himself. By 1865, the literary periodical The Russian Messenger began serializing an early draft under the title The Year 1805.

Dissatisfied with that early serialization, Tolstoy heavily revised and reshaped the narrative over several years. Between 1866 and 1869, his wife, Sophia Tolstaya, copied several drafts by hand as he reworked the manuscript. The text moved beyond conventional fiction by intertwining an aristocratic family chronicle with extensive essays on power, warfare, and historical theory. Issued in volumes from 1868, the complete work appeared in book form by 1869 under the new title War and Peace.