War and Peace

About this book

War and Peace is Leo Tolstoy’s novel of Russian life during the wars against Napoleon, from 1805 to 1812, with an epilogue set in 1820. It follows five aristocratic families, chiefly the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs and the Bezukhovs, through drawing rooms, country estates, battlefields and the burning of Moscow. Tolstoy worked on it from 1863 to 1869 and famously declined to call it a novel, saying it was simply what the author wanted to express in the form he chose.

The book is often cited as the longest great novel in the European tradition and as a standard against which other historical fiction is measured. Its reputation rests on the scale of its cast, the exactness of its scenes, and a quality readers keep remarking on: that its characters seem to change the way living people do, by small accumulations rather than by plot.

The story

The novel opens at a St. Petersburg party in July 1805, where most of the principal characters are introduced. Pierre Bezukhov, the awkward illegitimate son of a count, is about to inherit an enormous fortune. His friend Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, unhappy in his marriage, is going to the war as a staff officer. In Moscow, the warm and disorganized Rostov family includes a lively thirteen-year-old daughter, Natasha, who will become the book’s center.

From there the story alternates between the home front and the army. The first campaign ends at the Battle of Austerlitz. Years of peace follow, with marriages, debts, duels and a long passage of Natasha’s growing up. Then in 1812 Napoleon crosses into Russia and the two strands join, as the invasion reaches the families’ own houses and estates. The battle of Borodino and the abandonment of Moscow are the book’s climax.

Themes and historical context

Tolstoy was writing fifty years after the events, in the 1860s, when Russia had just abolished serfdom and the educated classes were arguing about the country’s direction. His own family history fed the book; several characters are based on his parents and grandparents. He read extensively in the military histories of the period and then set out to show that they were wrong about how battles and campaigns actually happen.

That argument runs through the novel and takes over its second epilogue. Tolstoy held that history is not made by great men issuing orders but by the sum of countless small actions, and that Napoleon and the Russian commander Kutuzov differ mainly in that Kutuzov knows this. The essayistic passages where he presses the case are the sections most often skipped, and most often defended.

Against the historical argument are set the private lives, and Tolstoy’s method there is attention: to what a girl notices at her first ball, what a wounded man sees looking up at the sky, what a father says when he does not want to say he is afraid. The book’s title names its two subjects, and the peace is as fully written as the war.

Who should read it

Readers should expect a very long book, well over a thousand pages, with several hundred named characters and a Russian naming system that gives each of them two or three forms. A character list, which many editions include, is almost necessary. The prose in the Maude translation is clear and the individual scenes are easy to follow. The difficulty is in stamina, and in deciding what to do with the philosophical chapters. Many readers find the first two hundred pages slow and the rest hard to put down.

Edition notes

The Gutenberg text is the translation by Louise Maude (1855-1939) and Aylmer Maude (1858-1938), English friends of Tolstoy who translated most of his work with his approval. Their version has been the basis of many later editions. The Maudes anglicized some first names in their translation, so readers comparing it with newer versions will notice “Andrew” for Andrei and “Nicholas” for Nikolai. The transcription was produced by an anonymous volunteer and David Widger.