“The purpose of the present collection is to bring together in one volume all of Tolstoy’s completed short stories before he embarked on his first full-length novel, War and Peace. They were written between the ages of twenty-two to thirty-four, that is, from 1851 to 1863—his first literary period…. Tolstoy continued to write short stories throughout his whole long life, but this collection of his earliest efforts, which contains several of his finest tales, is particularly important, not only for the intrinsic worth and charms of these stories, but also for an understanding of the inception and development of a narrative art which found its fullest expression in the great novels. Here we observe the youthful Tolstoy eager for literary fame, agonizing over the fear of failure and then boyishly jubilant over success, yet always boldly experimenting with form and content.”

-From the Introduction by Ernest J. Simmons