The 40+ Books Leo Tolstoy Recommends Reading

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, better known as Leo Tolstoy, was a renowned Russian writer and perhaps one of the greatest authors of all time. Best known for his two novels “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”, Tolstoy also wrote several short stories and a semi-autobiographical trilogy.

Author Virginia Woolf once called Tolstoy “the greatest of all novelists.” Even today, over a hundred years after his death, Tolstoy’s thousand long page books are still in print and continue to sell well.

A few of Tolstoy’s bestselling books.

“Rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”

Being one of the greats is no easy feat so I began to research which books Tolstoy loved most during his life in an attempt to gain insight into what influenced this genius writer.

According to an article by Russia Beyond, Tolstoy decided to compile a list of his own 100 must-read books after reading and being dissatisfied with author John Lubbock’s list which was published in 1891.

However, Tolstoy found that creating a list of the 100 greatest books to be difficult, so instead, he sent a letter to his publisher Mikhail Lederle with 45 books that impressed him the most. Tolstoy’s list contains a wide range of books from religious texts to Chinese philosophy, and is divided into five ages of man with their actual degree of influence ("enormous," "v. great," or merely "great").

Tolstoy’s list of the 45 books he recommends reading:

Childhood to the age of 14 or so:

• Pushkin’s poems: Napoleon - Great
• Tales from The Thousand and One Nights - Great
• The Little Black Hen by Pogorelsky - V. great
• The story of Joseph from the Bible - Enormous
• Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich. Folk Tales - Enormous

Age 14 to 20:

• History of the Conquest of Mexico by William Prescott - Great
• The Overcoat, The Two Ivans, Nevsky Prospect by By Nikolai Gogol - Great
• Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol - V. great
• Die Räuber by Friedrich Schiller - V. great
• Polinka Sachs by Aleksandr Druzhinin - V. great
• Yevgeny Onegin by Alexander Pushkin - V. great
• A Sportsman’s Sketches by Ivan Turgenev - V. great
• The Hapless Anton by Dmitry Grigorovich - V. great
• A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne - V. great
• A Hero for our Time by Mikhail Lermontov - V. great
• Nouvelle Héloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - V. great
• Viy by Nikolai Gogol - Enormous
• Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Enormous
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - Enormous
• Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Enormous
• Matthew’s Gospel: Sermon on the Mount - Enormous

Age 20 to 35:

• Afanasy Fet’s poems - Great
• Aleksey Koltsov’s poems - Great
• Fyodor Tyutchev’s poems - Great
• The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer (read in Russian) - Great
• Phaedo and Symposium by Plato (in Cousin’s translation) - Great
• Victor Hugo. Notre Dame de Paris - V. great
• Hermann and Dorothea by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - V. great

Age 35 to 50:

• George Eliot. Novels - Great
• Anthony Trollope, Novels - Great
• Mrs. [Henry] Wood. Novels - Great
• The byliny - V. great
• Anabasis by Xenophon - V. great
• The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer (in Greek) - V. great
• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Enormous

Age 50 to 63:

• Frederick William Robertson’s sermons - Great
• Theodore Parker Discourse on religious subject - Great
• The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach - Great
• Confucius and Mencius - V. great
• Book of Genesis (in Hebrew) - V. great
• Progress and Poverty by Henry George - V. great
• Epictetus - Enormous
• Pensées by Blaise Pascal - Enormous
• All the Gospels (in Greek) Enormous
• Lao-Tzu. Julien [S. Julien, French translator] - Enormous
• On the Buddha. Well-known Frenchman [“Lalita Vistara”] - Enormous

How many books on Tolstoy’s list have you read?

I’ve read only a couple books on this list (the English versions), but it looks like I have a lot more reading to do. If there’s a book on here that you think is a must-read, let me know in the comments below!

You may also want to check out these book recommendations from:

• Stephen King
• Ernest Hemingway
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• J.K. Rowling

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If you want to check out my list of recommended books, you can find that here.

A&B Most Recommended Books