“In the first volume of Tolstoy’s Short novels (Modern Library, 1965), I included all the works in this genre written during his early literary period before the appearance of his first full-length novel War and Peace. This second volume contains the eight short novels which [Tolstoy] completed in the remaining years of his life. Among them are several of his most remarkable tales…

“Tolstoy’s own moral presence, combined with a subjective spiritual element, is frequently felt in the stories of the second volume, although he is careful, in the best of them, to embody his personal views in impeccable artistic form. The different emphasis is largely a consequence of Tolstoy’s sharply altered outlook on life—all the short novels in this collection were written after his searing spiritual experience of 1880-81. After these years the art of fiction, with some few exceptions, became a medium for conveying his search for truth… Though in [these] narratives Tolstoy is usually concerned with bringing the actions and thoughts of his characters into harmony with his new beliefs, he rarely ceases to be the superb literary artist in matters of language, form, and content.”

-From the Introduction by Ernest J. Simmons