Editing War and Peace (section)

==Composition history==
[[File:Tolstoy 1868.jpg|thumb|upright|Tolstoy photographed in 1868, during the composition of ''War and Peace''.]]
[[File:Tolstoy - War and Peace - ninth draft.jpg|thumb|upright|Tolstoy's notes from the ninth draft of ''War and Peace'', 1864.]]
Tolstoy began writing ''War and Peace'' in 1863, the year that he married and settled down at his country estate. In September of that year, he wrote to Elizabeth Bers, his sister-in-law, asking if she could find any chronicles, diaries, or records from the Napoleonic period in Russia. He was dismayed to find that there were few written records of Russian domestic life from that time and tried to rectify these omissions in early drafts of the novel.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hare|first=Richard|date=1956|title=Tolstoy's Motives for Writing "War and Peace"|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/126046|journal=The Russian Review|volume=15|issue=2|pages=110–121|doi=10.2307/126046|jstor=126046|issn=0036-0341|url-access=subscription}}</ref> The first half of the book was named "1805". During the writing of the second half, he read widely and acknowledged [[Arthur Schopenhauer|Schopenhauer]] as one of his main inspirations. Tolstoy wrote in a letter to [[Afanasy Fet]] that what he had written in ''War and Peace'' is also said by Schopenhauer in ''[[The World as Will and Representation]]''. However, Tolstoy approaches "it from the other side."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Thompson|first=Caleb|date=2009|title=Quietism from the Side of Happiness: Tolstoy, Schopenhauer, War and Peace|url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/common-knowledge/article-abstract/15/3/395/6636/Quietism-from-the-Side-of-HappinessTolstoy|journal=Common Knowledge|volume=15|issue=3|pages=395–411|doi=10.1215/0961754X-2009-020|s2cid=145535267 |url-access=subscription}}</ref>

The first draft of the novel was completed in 1863. In 1865, the periodical {{lang|ru-Latn|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.<ref name=Knowles/><ref name="FeuerMiller2008"/> Tolstoy's wife, [[Sophia Tolstaya]], copied as many as seven separate complete manuscripts before Tolstoy considered it ready for publication.<ref name="FeuerMiller2008"/> The version that was published in {{lang|ru-Latn|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|date=September 2016}}

It is unknown why Tolstoy changed the name of the work to ''War and Peace'' ('{{lang|ru|Война и мир}}' in [[Reforms of Russian orthography|reformed orthography]], and 'Война и миръ' in pre-reform orthography, pronounced {{lang|ru-Latn|Voyna i mir}}). He may have borrowed the title from the 1861 work of [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]]: {{lang|fr|La Guerre et la Paix}} ("War and Peace" in [[French language|French]]).<ref name="Pevear 2008 VIII–IX"/> 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 language|English]], [[German language|German]], [[French language|French]], [[Spanish language|Spanish]], [[Dutch language|Dutch]], [[Swedish language|Swedish]], [[Finnish language|Finnish]], [[Albanian language|Albanian]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Czech language|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.<ref name="j1">{{cite journal |last=Emerson |first=Caryl |year=1985 |title=The Tolstoy Connection in Bakhtin |jstor=462201 |journal=PMLA |volume=100 |issue=1 |pages=68–80 (68–71) |doi=10.2307/462201 |s2cid=163631233 }}</ref>

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 [[essay]]s 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 [[addendum|appendix]].<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hudspith|first=Sarah|date=|title=Ten Things You Need to Know About War And Peace|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5lrPL2vWJG6Th9zmh1xwqfV/ten-things-you-need-to-know-about-war-and-peace|access-date=30 January 2021|website=BBC Radio 4}}</ref>