Novelist, essayist, dramatist, and philosopher, Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is most famous for his sprawling portraits of 19th-century Russian life, as recounted in Anna Karenina and War and Peace. He also compiled a collection of inspirational quotations from renowned writers and thinkers in the book A Calendar of Wisdom. Bob Blaisdell is professor of English at the City University of New York's Kingsborough Community College. He is the author of Creating Anna Karenina, and the editor of more than three dozen Dover literature and poetry collections.