- Leo Tolstoy became a vegetarian in his later years.
- Tolstoy's literary idol was French author Victor Hugo whom he met on an 1861 trip to France.
- Leo Tolstoy was sent to law school but soon returned home. His teachers found him completely unwilling to learn.
- Tolstoy once planned to write a novel about Peter the Great but abandoned the project and wrote Anna Karenina instead.
- Tolstoy loved to gamble and as a young man often found himself in debt due to his gambling habit.
- Even though the two men never met in person, Leo Tolstoy burst into tears upon receiving the news that fellow Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevski had died.
- Tolstoy would frequently give large sums of money to beggars when in large cities.
- Leo Tolstoy reportedly learned to ride a bicycle when he was 67 years old.
- The Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901 because of his anarchist and pacifist views.
- Leo Tolstoy eventually came to oppose the institutions of private property and marriage.
- Leo Tolstoy and his wife had a total of 13 children.
- During his life, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that William Shakespeare was a bad dramatist and not a true artist at all.
- The character of Levin in Anna Karenina is based upon Tolstoy himself.
- Leo Tolstoy joined the Russian army in 1851.
- Wife, Sofia, was 16 years younger than Tolstoy.
Leo Tolstoy quick facts
