Early History
The estate of Yasnaya Polyana was originally owned by the Kartsev family. At the end of the 18th century it was purchased by Prince Nikolai Volkonskiy, the grandfather of the writer, who created a formal French garden and an English landscape garden, as well as long alleys of birch and oak trees.
The house passed from Nikolai Volkonskiy to his only daughter, Maria Nikolayevna, the mother of Leo Tolstoy. Her husband, Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the war against Napoleon in 1812, built a 32-room house and an ensemble of work buildings, and enlarged the park.
Read more about this topic: Yasnaya Polyana
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or history:
“But she is early up and out,
To trim the year or strip its bones;”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)