ANNA KARENINA I/ DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK

The title of the book is “ Anna Karenina”
The novel was published by Penguin Readers Publishing
The translation of the book was first published in Penguin Classics 1954
( The Whole Edition ) by Rosemary Edmonds
The first simplified edition was published in 1992
This edition was published in 2001
The type of the book is novel.
The author of the book is Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy.

Count Leo Nikolayevich TOLSTOY: Count Leo Tolstoy( born sept.9,1828 and died nov.22,1910) was Russia’s greatest novelist and one of its most influential moral philosophers.He was born near Moscow at Yasnaya Polyanai, or “Clear Glade” the estate where he was to spend most of his life.At the age of nine he became an orphan and thereafter he was brought up by aunts.In 1847 he left the University of Kazan to reform his estate, but he was unprepared for the task and moved to Moscow.Five years later, Tolstoy volunteered for the army in the Caucasus,Crimea; he participated in the defense of Sevastopol and was hailed as a rising literary star for his fictionalized Childhood, Youth and the Sevastopol Sketches,which already contained some of the main features of his mature work–psychological analysis of unprecendented detail, and a unglamorous actions performed by ordinary men.
Tolstoy retired from the army in 1856, traveled in Europe, and returned to his estate, where he founded a school for peasant children that anticipated several modern educational practises.He was married in 1862 and a year later publihed a novel he had begun much earlier, The Cossacks.During this period he wrotethe novels upon which most of his fame rests: War and Peace and Anna Karenina.A deep-seated dissatisfaction with himself and a long-frustrated search for meaning in life, however, led to the crisis Tolstoy described in his Confession and Memoirs of a Madman.In these works he also formulated a doctorine to live by, based on a nonviolence, renunciation of wealth, self-improvement through pyscical work, and nonparticipation in such social institutions as war juries.
The doctorine had an enormous vogue, profoundly influencing Mahatma Gandhi, among others.Yasyana Polyanai became a place of pligrimage, and Tolstoy was revered and emulated throughoutthe world.Constant strife, however, existed between Tolstoy’s wife, Sofia, and his followers; finally, after many scenes, Tolstoy left the estate in October 1910, became ill, and died at nearby Astopovo a few weeks later.
Anna Karenina (1875-77) also weaves together several plots. Anna gives up family and social position to live with her lover, Vronsky, and her brother’s less consuming adulterous passions lead to marital strife.The courtship and rewarding marriage of Levin and Kitty, based on Tolstoy’s own experience, provide a contrast.Although the novel’s scope is smaller than that of War and Peace, and its techniques differ, it also presents an extensive picture of Russia.The novel’s end depicts the crisis the author was undergoing himself.

II/ Presentation of the Book
The story takes place in Russian High Society in St.Petersburg and Moscow. And also the country estates which belongs to Levin and Count Vronsky.
“In the 1870’s, the Russian aristocracy was plagued by financial woes.The liberation of the serfs some years earlier had created an agricultural crisis, as it became extremely diffucult for large landowners to make a profit through farming.The introductionof the railroads caused urban centers such as Moscow and Petersburg (Leningrad) to replace country estates as the centers of the social life, but the expense of the life in the cities, combained with the easy access to bank loans and to the nobility of Western Europe led to ritual imitation throughout Anna Karenina, well-bred Russian men and women speak to one another primarily in French, particularly if they seek privacy from eavesd