Anna Karenina, serialised from 1875 to 1877, is Leo Tolstoy's great novel of love, marriage and society in nineteenth-century Russia. Anna, the wife of a senior official, falls in love with the dashing officer Count Vronsky, defies the conventions of high society and pays a terrible price, while the landowner Levin searches for the meaning of life. English readers long knew it through Constance Garnett's translation of 1901.
The story
Anna Arkadyevna Karenina travels from St Petersburg to Moscow to reconcile her brother Stiva Oblonsky with his wife Dolly. At the station she meets Count Alexei Vronsky, who is courting Dolly's young sister Kitty. Vronsky falls for Anna and follows her back to St Petersburg.
Anna leaves her husband, Alexei Karenin, and her son to live with Vronsky, but she is shut out of society and tormented by jealousy. In parallel, Konstantin Levin, rejected at first by Kitty, marries her, works on his estate alongside his peasants and struggles with questions of faith and death.
Writing the novel
Tolstoy began the novel in 1873, after finishing War and Peace, and took four years to complete it. It was published in instalments in the journal The Russian Messenger from 1875 to 1877.
When the editor, Mikhail Katkov, refused to print the last part, in which the characters criticise the Russian volunteers going to fight in the Serbian war, Tolstoy published it separately. The complete novel appeared as a book in 1878.
Two stories in one
The novel is built on contrasts between Anna's tragic passion and Levin's slow search for a meaningful life, between the city and the country, and between three marriages. Levin, with his doubts and his love of the land, is largely a self-portrait of Tolstoy.
Many writers, including Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann and William Faulkner, admired it as one of the greatest novels ever written. It has been adapted many times for the cinema, notably with Greta Garbo in 1935 and Vivien Leigh in 1948.
Anecdotes
A death at the station
In January 1872, Anna Pirogova, the mistress of Tolstoy's neighbour, threw herself under a goods train after being abandoned. Tolstoy went to the station to see her body, and the scene stayed with him when he created Anna.
Pushkin's daughter
Tolstoy is said to have based Anna's appearance in part on Maria Hartung, the daughter of the poet Alexander Pushkin, whom he met at a reception in Tula and whose dark curls and graceful bearing struck him.
Frequently asked questions
When was Anna Karenina published?
In instalments from 1875 to 1877, and as a complete book in 1878.
Who translated Anna Karenina into English?
One of the best-known translations is that of Constance Garnett, published in 1901 and quoted on Guesseo; there have been many others since.
Who is Levin in Anna Karenina?
Konstantin Levin, a landowner who marries Kitty and searches for the meaning of life; he is largely a portrait of Tolstoy himself.