One hundred years ago next week the great Russian master of fiction, Leo Tolstoy, passed away. In his honor The Atlantic has dug up a profile of the writer from 1891. For our part, we decided to look at the many faces (i.e. covers) of Anna Karenina, a novel that, when asked to name the three best novels ever, William Faulkner listed as one, two, and three. Originally the story was published in serial installments in The Russian Messenger from 1873 to 1877. The first time it appeared as a full book was 1878, with numerous reprintings since then. Click through for a gallery of its covers through the years.
First Edition (1878)
This is the title page of the first edition of Anna Karenina in Russian.
Comments (6)
Very cool! Thanks for gathering these up, I loved this book! (though it took me an entire year to read! something about Tolstoy makes me sleepy…)
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Thanks for this; seeing the different covers is fascinating. This is one of my all time favorite reads and once I saw the gorgeous Vivien Leigh in the movie, I am now addicted to both!
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Regarding the only cover image of a man of a woman (The Modern Library, Dec.1993), it’s not Vronsky. It’s a drawing based on a photo of Tolstoy as a young officer during the Crimean War. see http://www.logoi.com/pastimages/leo_tolstoy.html
and/or http://www.biographyonline.net/writers/leo-tolstoy.html
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