The Russian novelist and moral philosophereo Tolstoy (1828–1910) ranks as one of the world’sgreatest writers. This edition of his selected works brings his thirty-five best short stories rangingfrom stories for children, stories for the people, and Russian folk tales to his adaptations fromFrench stories and the ones written for the Jewish pogrom victims in Russia. The purpose of alltrue creative art, he believed, is to teach. But the message in all his stories is presented with suchhumour that the reader hardly realizes that it is strongly didactic.Tolstoy authored some of the world’s best and most recognized works over the course of a nearlyhalf-century career which has stood the test of time and geographical boundaries