Read about the other entries on the list.Sofia Tolstoy
When Sofia Behrs wed the 34-year-old Leo Tolstoy, she was just 18 years old. The couple would weather 48 years together, and they weren’t always the happiest. In Sofia’s later published diaries, she talks often of her husband’s lack of emotion toward her, as well as his willingness to leave the household and childrearing grunt work in her hands. In addition to her more mundane tasks, Sofia endlessly transcribed Tolstoy’s writing—and consistently said she was awestruck by her husband’s brilliance. Despite her grievances about his shortfalls as a husband and father, the wife of the man who wrote Anna Karenina remained truly dedicated to Tolstoy’s work until nearly a decade after his passing in 1910.
--Marshal Zeringue
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