War and Peace (Russian: Война и мир, Pre-reform Russian: «Война и миръ») is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and a well-known work of fiction.[1] It is regarded as Tolstoy's finest literary achievement, along with his other work Anna Karenina (1873–1877).

War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to the French invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families. Portions of an earlier version of the novel, then known as The Year 1805,[2] were serialized in the magazine The Russian Messenger between 1865 and 1867. The novel was first published in its entirety in 1869.[3] Newsweek in 2009 ranked it top of its list of Top 100 Books.[4]

Tolstoy himself, somewhat enigmatically, said of War and Peace that it was "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle."

War and Peace is famously long for a novel, though not the longest, and it is subdivided into four books or volumes, each with subparts containing many chapters.

Tolstoy came up with the title, and some of his themes, from an 1861 work of Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix ('War and Peace' in French). Tolstoy had served in the Crimean War and written a series of short stories and novellas featuring scenes of war.

He began writing War and Peace in the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. The first half of the book was written under the name "1805".

During the writing of the second half, he read widely and acknowledged Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations. However, Tolstoy developed his own views of history and the role of the individual within it.[6]

The novel can be generally classified as historical fiction. It contains elements present in many types of popular 18th and 19th century literature, especially the romance novel. War and Peace attains its literary status by transcending genres.

Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted for its "god-like" ability to hover over and within events, but also in the way it swiftly and seamlessly portrayed a particular character's point of view.[7] His use of visual detail is often cinematic in its scope, using the literary equivalents of panning, wide shots and close-ups, to give dramatic interest to battles and ballrooms alike. These devices, while not exclusive to Tolstoy, are part of the new style of the novel that arose in the mid-19th century and of which Tolstoy proved himself a master.[8]
[edit] Realism

Tolstoy incorporated extensive historical research. He was also influenced by many other novels.[9] A veteran of the Crimean War, Tolstoy was quite critical of standard history, especially the standards of military history, in War and Peace. Tolstoy read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and combined more traditional historical writing with the novel form. He explains at the start of the novel's third volume his own views on how history ought to be written. His aim was to blur the line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth, as he states in Volume II.

The novel is set 60 years earlier than the time at which Tolstoy wrote it, "in the days of our grandfathers", as he puts it. He had spoken with people who had lived through war during the French invasion of Russia in 1812, so the book is also, in part, accurate ethnography fictionalized. He read letters, journals, autobiographical and biographical materials pertaining to Napoleon and the dozens of other historical characters in the novel. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace.

War and Peace has a large cast of characters, the majority of whom are introduced in the first book. Some are actual historical figures, such as Napoleon and Alexander I. While the scope of the novel is vast, it is centered around five aristocratic families. The plot and the interactions of the characters take place in the era surrounding the 1812 French invasion of Russia during the Napoleonic wars.[21]

Book/Volume One
Empress dowager, Maria Feodorovna, mother of reigning Tsar Alexander I, is the most powerful woman in the Russian royal court, in the historical setting of the novel. - Wikipedia