19th Century · Novel / novella

Anna Karenina

Name: Anna Karenina
Author: Leo Tolstoy

by Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina sets intimate choices inside a wide social field, pairing Anna’s crisis with Levin’s search for a workable relation among love, family, labor, faith, and ordinary life.

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Date: 1878
Origin: Russia
Era: 19th Century
Genre: Novel / novella
Canon tier: Essential core
Difficulty: Moderate
Length: Medium
Reading time: 24–36 hours
Collection: The Western Canon

Subjects and themes

Why it matters

Its parallel plots and exact shifts of perspective make private feeling inseparable from institutions, habits, and the moral judgments of a whole society.

This work is included on the basis of expanded / modern canon. Its cataloged influence level is 5 out of 5.

Before you read

Keep the Anna–Vronsky and Levin–Kitty plots in active comparison. The novel’s meaning develops through their differences in tempo, attention, and relation to social life.

Historical context

Questions of marriage, property, agriculture, reform, class, and religious belief belong to the novel’s central structure rather than functioning as detachable historical detail.