Family Happiness and Other Stories

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: MARY CAROLYN WALDREP
EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: T. N. R. ROGERS

Copyright

Copyright © 2005 by Dover Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2005, is a new compilation of six unabridged stories, reprinted from standard editions: “Family Happiness” (Cee , 1859), “Three Deaths” (, , 1859), “The Three Hermits” ( , 1886), “The Devil”o, writen 1889–1890; first published 1911), “Father Sergius” (O C,written 1890-1898; first published 1911), and “Master and Man” ( pa, 1895). Spelling has been made consistent and Americanized, and the editor has written a new Introduction and a few footnotes specially for the Dover edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tolstoy Leo, graf, 1828-1910.

[Short stories. English. Selections]

Family happiness and other stories / Leo Tolstoy.

p. cm. - (Dover thrift editions)

1st work originally published: 1859. 2nd work originally published: 1859. 3rd word originally published: 1886. 4th work originally published: 1911. 5th work originally published: 1911. 6th work originally published: 1895. With new introd.

Contents: Family happiness—Three deaths—The three hermits—The devil—Father Sergius—Master and man.

9780486112305

1. Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910-Translations into English. I. Title. II. Series.

PG3366.A13 2005
891.73’3—dc22

2005045420

Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

Introduction

LEV NIKOLAYEVICH TOLSTOY (1828–1910) will of course always be best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina. But before and after those monumental novels, he produced many short stories, essays, and short novels (or long stories—a particularly Russian form known as povesti). This volume, which contains four of his long stories and two shorter ones, spans almost his entire writing life and displays well his unique, uneasy temperament and intelligence.

“Family Happiness,” the longest, richest, and most novelistic (though not the most powerful) of the stories presented here, comes from his early period—the period, that is, before his marriage and before his great novels. As he does in much of his best fiction, Tolstoy makes substantial use of the facts of his life—especially those that have left him wracked with guilt. In 1856, after the death of her father, he was appointed the tutor to a young woman named Valeriya Arseneva, who lived on a nearby estate. He became deeply involved with her, but could not bring himself to marry her. “I never loved her with real love,” he admitted later. “I was carried away by the reprehensible desire to inspire love. This gave me a delight I had never before experienced....