War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: Free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB Download
War and Peace
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Book I — Part I — Chapter I
“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.”
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pávlovna Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasíli Kurágin, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pávlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.
All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:
“If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Prince), and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10—Annette Schérer.”
This is only the opening of Book I. Download the complete unabridged edition to read all four volumes and the two epilogues of Tolstoy’s epic.
Download Full EPUBTL;DR
War and Peace is an 1869 historical novel by Leo Tolstoy, set during the Napoleonic Wars and following four Russian aristocratic families across fifteen books and two epilogues. It moves between drawing rooms and battlefields, tracing Pierre Bezukhov’s search for meaning, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky’s disillusionment, and Natasha Rostova’s coming of age while asking whether history is made by great men or by the countless small acts of ordinary people. This Standard Ebooks edition uses the 1922 translation by Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude, is based on Project Gutenberg #2600, and is in the public domain in the United States. The text was prepared by Standard Ebooks.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: Summary, Characters & Themes
War and Peace is the 1869 novel by Leo Tolstoy that follows four Russian aristocratic families through the Napoleonic Wars, from the salons of 1805 to the Decembrist stirrings of the 1820s. This summary and analysis treats it as what it is: an enormous experiment in mixing fiction with history, and in asking how much of either is decided by individuals.
The novel opens in Anna Pavlovna Scherer’s drawing room, where Pierre Bezukhov is an awkward newcomer and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky is already tired of society. Both are drawn into the war. Andrei seeks glory at Austerlitz and finds only a sky. Pierre drifts through Freemasonry, a disastrous marriage, and a half-baked plan to assassinate Napoleon. Around them the Rostov family supplies the novel with its warmth: Natasha’s singing, Nikolai’s gambling debts, Petya’s fatal enthusiasm.
The middle books turn to the invasion of 1812. Borodino is the hinge. Tolstoy gives it to us from inside a battery and from above, and then refuses to let either view settle into a clean account. Moscow burns, the French retreat, and the same characters are quietly rearranged. Andrei dies forgiving. Pierre survives a firing squad and a prison shed and comes out lighter. Natasha, who once nearly eloped, becomes the center of a household.
The last sections are less a plot than a slow meditation. Tolstoy interrupts his own novel to argue about free will, and ends with a young Nikolushka Bolkonsky dreaming of a future that the book does not describe. Whether this makes War and Peace a novel or something else is still argued about; what is not argued about is how completely it holds a whole society in view.
Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in the 1860s, after Anna Karenina had not yet been written and before his later moral and religious works. Readers who finish it often go on to Anna Karenina, his other large novel, which applies a similar intensity to a smaller set of lives.
This Standard Ebooks edition uses the 1922 translation by Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude, who knew Tolstoy personally and worked from the Russian text with his wife. It is based on Project Gutenberg #2600 and on Internet Archive scans, and the text was prepared by Standard Ebooks. The work is in the public domain in the United States.
Historical Context
Tolstoy was born in 1828, two decades after the events he describes, and wrote during the reforms of Alexander II. His sources included memoirs, letters, and histories, and he was willing to disagree with all of them. The novel’s argument that history is not made by great men but by the aggregate movement of ordinary people was as controversial in 1869 as it is useful today.
Key Characters & Literary Archetypes
- Pierre Bezukhov（The Seeker）: Illegitimate son who inherits a fortune and spends the novel trying on one philosophy after another before finding something quieter.
- Prince Andrei Bolkonsky（The Disillusioned）: Clever, proud, and tired of the world; his wound at Austerlitz rearranges everything he thought he wanted.
- Natasha Rostova（The Vital Center）: A girl who sings, nearly ruins herself, and grows into the person around whom the surviving families reorganize.
- Nikolai Rostov（The Ordinary Good Man）: A hussar with debts and a conscience, who ends by keeping a family and an estate alive.
- Napoleon（The Would-Be Great Man）: Not a character in the usual sense, but the novel’s test case for whether any individual can be the cause of history.
Core Literary Themes
- History and Free Will: The novel’s longest argument, carried on in essays as well as scenes, is that historical events are too complex for any one person to cause.
- War and Its Aftermath: Battles are shown as confusion, courage, and accident, not as plans; what survives them is smaller and more domestic.
- Family and Marriage: The four families are the novel’s real structure, and the marriages at the end are its quiet verdict on how to live.
- Death: Andrei’s long dying, and the deaths around Borodino, strip away ambition and leave what Tolstoy treats as the only reliable thing: a mind that has stopped arguing with what is.
- The Ordinary Life: The book’s final position, though it takes fifteen parts to reach, is that happiness is close to hand and mostly a matter of attention.
Why Download Our Custom E-Reader Edition of War and Peace?
Tolstoy published War and Peace in 1869, after six years of writing and rewriting. It is not a war memoir and not a family chronicle, though it contains both; it is a long argument about how history happens, carried on through the lives of people who mostly do not know they are taking part in it.
The novel moves between two kinds of scene. In drawing rooms, marriages are arranged and reputations are lost over a single remark. On the battlefield, thousands of men die for reasons no one present can explain. Pierre, Andrei, and Natasha pass through both, and the book refuses to tell us which of the two matters more.
Most free digital editions of the Maude translation are plain text dumps. Chapters run together, the book and part divisions disappear, and the four-volume structure becomes a single undifferentiated scroll. On a phone or e-reader that is nearly unreadable. This edition restores the full hierarchy of books, parts, and chapters, with working navigation and a layout suited to a novel read over weeks rather than hours.
- Based on the Standard Ebooks Edition, via Project Gutenberg #2600: The text follows the Standard Ebooks edition of the 1922 Maude translation, which rests on a transcription from Project Gutenberg #2600 and on scans held by the Internet Archive.
- Granular Architectural NCX/Nav Structural Navigation: Every book, part, and chapter is a separate navigation point, so you can move between volumes, return to a scene, or read the epilogues out of order without losing your place.
- Calibrated Typographical Layout for Historical Fiction: Long passages of dialogue and the novel’s essayistic chapters are set with generous spacing and a readable serif face, which matters when a single part runs to a hundred pages.
- Verified Public Domain Sources: The edition is based on Standard Ebooks, a volunteer project that produces public domain texts with modern typography. The text was prepared by Standard Ebooks, and the work is in the public domain in the United States. It also draws on Project Gutenberg #2600.
