Presentation This novel first appeared in serial form in the periodical Rousky vestnik (The Russian Messenger or The Russian Courier), but Tolstoy entered into conflict with the editor-in-chief Mikhail Katkov about the content of the last episode. The novel, therefore, appeared in its entirety only when it was published as a book. The soap opera nevertheless achieved great success in nineteenth-century Russia, with some women in the world going so far as to send their servants to print to determine the content of the next episodes. Anna Karenina portrays the Russian nobility, on which Tolstoy looks critically. The character of Anna Karenina was partly inspired by Maria Hartung (1832-1919), the eldest daughter of the poet Alexander Pushkin. For the tragic end of the novel, the author was inspired by a fact: the mistress of his neighbor Bibikov threw himself under a train in January 1872; He went to see the body of the unhappy woman. Summary Anna Karenina is a young woman married to Alexis Karenina, faithful and mother of a young boy Serge. Anna Karenina goes to Moscow with her brother Stiva Oblonski. As she left the train, she met Count Vronski. Anna falls in love with Vronski, that brilliant but frivolous officer. She fights against this passion and ends up by abandoning herself with guilty happiness to the current that carries her to this young officer. Then Anna gets pregnant. Feeling guilty and deeply depressed by her fault, she decides to confess her infidelity to her husband. The love she brings to her son makes her think for a moment of abandoning husband and lover and fleeing with him. But a letter from her husband, who had gone on a journey, in response to his confession, where he only asked her to respect appearances, decided to stay. But the pregnancy is going badly. After giving birth to a daughter, Anna contracts fever and risks dying. She sends a telegram to her husband, asking her to return and forgive her. She repents and calls death as a liberation for all. Empress by the remorse of his wife and his imminent death, Alexis consents to forgive him. Then, some time later, an unexpected encounter with Vronski is enough to shatter the decision of Anna. She throws herself in her arms and they decide to flee together abroad. It is for Anna, a moment of joy and deliverance. Back in Russia, Anna and Vronski live on the margins of society. They arouse both admiration and disapproval for having thus braved the conventions of the high society of Russia. Vronski's fortune allows them to have an independent existence and they manage to recreate a micro-society around them on the margins of the Great World. But Anna can not bear to have abandoned her child and betrayed her husband. This heavy climate provokes a reciprocal misunderstanding that obscures their union. Anna, a prey to the most violent torments, and caught in a gear from which she can not free herself, put an end to her life by throwing herself under a train. In parallel to their adventure, Tolstoy paints the portrait of two other couples: Kitty and Lévine, and Daria and Oblonski. Kitty is a beautiful teenager who, at eighteen, makes her entry into the world. At a ball, the statement of Lévine flatters it because it gives importance. She nevertheless answers in the negative because she is in love with Vronski. The latter escapes him at this ball where he succumbs to the fascination of Anna. Kitty dark then in shame. Several months after this sinister ball, Kitty meets again Levine with whom she then feels a mixture of dread and happiness. She realizes she only loved him. Kitty and Lévine understand that the past was only a trial destined to consolidate their love. They decide to marry. Daria, wife submissive and resigned, but especially exhausted by the tasks of everyday life is the wife of Stiva Oblonski. Despite his infidelity, Oblonski lavished on his wife several marks of comforting tenderness.
About the Author: Garnett was born in Brighton, England, the sixth of the eight children of the solicitor David Black (1817-1892), afterwards town clerk and coroner, and his wife, Clara Maria Patten (1825-1875), daughter of George Patten. Her brother was the mathematician Arthur Black, and her sister was the labor organizer and novelist Clementina Black. Her father became paralysed in 1873, and two years later her mother died, from a heart attack after lifting him from his chair to his bed. She was initially educated at Brighton and Hove High School. Afterwards she studied Latin and Greek at Newnham College, Cambridge, on a government scholarship. In 1883 she moved to London, where she worked initially as a governess, and then as the librarian at the People's Palace Library. Through her sister, Clementina, she met Dr. Richard Garnett, then the Keeper of Printed Materials at the British Museum, and his son Edward Garnett, whom she married in Brighton on 31 August 1889. Edward, after working as a publisher's reader for T. Fisher Unwin, William Heinemann, and Duckworth, went on to become a distinguished reader for the publisher Jonathan Cape. In the summer of 1891, then pregnant with her only child, she was introduced by Edward to the Russian exile Feliks Volkhovsky, who began teaching her Russian. He also introduced her to his fellow exile and colleague Sergius Stepniak and his wife Fanny. Soon after, Garnett began working with Stepniak, translating Russian works for publication; her first published translations were "A Common Story" by Ivan Goncharov, and "The Kingdom of God is Within You" by Leo Tolstoy. The latter was published while she was making her first trip to Russia in early 1894. After visits to Moscow and Saint Petersburg, she traveled to Yasnaya Polyana where she met Tolstoy; although the latter expressed interest in having her translate more of his religious works, she had already begun working on the novels of Turgenev and continued with that work on her return home. Initially she worked with Stepniak on her translations; after his untimely death in 1895, Stepniak's wife Fanny worked with her. Over the next four decades, Garnett would produce English-language versions of dozens of volumes by Tolstoy, Gogol, Goncharov, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Herzen and Chekhov.