Chicago: A Commonplace Novel, Amey Miller

L. N. TOLSTOY, 1862

In or about March of 1873, he began the novel which was to become Anna Karenina, abandoning two other projects he was working on, a novel set at the time of Peter the Great, and a primer for children. He wrote his friend Strakhov that his opening inspiration was a fragment of Pushkin’s “the guests were gathering at the dacha.” 1

suddenly it came together so beautifully that a novel emerged, which I have finished today in draft form, a novel very lively, fiery and accomplished, with which I am very pleased and which will be ready, if God grants me health, in two weeks, and which has nothing in general to do with the project on which I have labored all year. If I finish it, I will publish it as a separate little book, but I want very much for you to have read it first. Would you perhaps be willing to read the proofs, with a view to its being published in Petersburg.