Leo Tolstoy
(1828–1910)

After Leo Tolstoy's parents died when he was a child, he was raised by relatives and educated by foreign tutors. As a boy, Tolstoy's favorite things to read were the folk tales of his native Russia, poems about ancient Russian heroes, and stories from the Bible. By the time he was ten, he began writing his own versions of fables and stories. As a teenager, Tolstoy pondered questions of good and evil, right and wrong–and he eventually became deeply religious. "We search for ...goodness, perfection in all this," he wrote in his diary, "but perfection is not given to man in anything."

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