The first draft of the novel was completed in 1863. In 1865, the periodical Russkiy Vestnik (The Russian Messenger) published the first part of this draft under the title 1805 and published more the following year. Tolstoy was dissatisfied with this version, although he allowed several parts of it to be published with a different ending in 1867. He heavily rewrote the entire novel between 1866 and 1869.[5][9] Tolstoy’s wife, Sophia Tolstaya, copied as many as seven separate complete manuscripts before Tolstoy considered it ready for publication.[9] The version that was published in Russkiy Vestnik had a very different ending from the version eventually published under the title War and Peace in 1869. Russians who had read the serialized version were eager to buy the complete novel, and it sold out almost immediately. The novel was quickly translated after publication into many other languages.[citation needed]
It is unknown why Tolstoy changed the name of the work to War and Peace (‘Война и мир’ in reformed orthography, and ‘Война и миръ’ in pre-reform orthography, pronounced Voyna i mir). He may have borrowed the title from the 1861 work of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix (“War and Peace” in French).[4] The title may also be a reference to the Roman Emperor Titus, who reigned from 79 to 81 AD and was described as being a master of “war and peace” in The Twelve Caesars, written by Suetonius in 119.
The 1805 manuscript was re-edited and annotated in Russia in 1983 and has been since translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Albanian, Korean, and Czech.
Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted not only for its god’s-eye point of view over and within events, but also in the way it swiftly and seamlessly portrayed an individual character’s viewpoint. His use of visual detail is often comparable to cinema, using literary techniques that resemble panning, wide shots, and close-ups. These devices, while not exclusive to Tolstoy, are part of the new style of the novel that arose in the mid-19th century and of which Tolstoy proved himself a master.[10]
The standard Russian text of War and Peace is divided into four volumes, comprising fifteen books, and an epilogue split into two parts. Roughly the first half is concerned strictly with the fictional characters, whereas the latter parts, as well as the second part of the epilogue, increasingly consist of essays about the nature of war, power, history, and historiography. Tolstoy interspersed these essays into the story in a way that defies previous fictional convention. Certain abridged versions remove these essays entirely, while others, published even during Tolstoy’s life, simply moved these essays into an appendix.[11]
Realism
The plot of the novel is set 55 years before Tolstoy wrote it, but he had spoken with people who lived through the 1812 French invasion of Russia. He read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars as well as letters, journals, autobiographies, and biographies of Napoleon and other key players of that era. There are approximately 160 real persons named or referred to in War and Peace.[12]
He worked from primary source materials, such as interviews and other documents, as well as from history books, philosophy texts, and other historical novels.[9] Tolstoy used a great deal of his own experience in the Crimean War to bring vivid detail and first-hand accounts of how the Imperial Russian Army was structured.[13]
Tolstoy was critical of standard history, especially military history, in War and Peace. He explains at the start of the novel’s third volume his own views on how history ought to be written.