Twenty-three Tales by Leo Tolstoy

Twenty-three Tales, Leo Tolstoy. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Oxford University Press. The World’s Classics series. 9th printing, 1924. Very good small hardcover with no dustjacket. The green cloth cover has slight wear with faint stains on the back cover. Bright gilt lettering and design on spine. Former owner’s signature on front free end paper. Clean, unmarked pages. One creased page corner. One signature of 16 pages is repeated between pp 192-93, but no pages are missing.

Tolstoy seems to suggest that these short tales were more valuable than his novels, as expressed in his What Is Art? quoted in the preface by Aylmer Maude. This small volume includes his story “The Three Hermits,” a version of which is related at the beginning of the chapter “The Law of Miracles” in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, summarized by Tolstoy’s writer-artist friend, Nicholas Roerich. (A painting by Roerich, Krishna (Spring in Kulu), in which Krishna is playing a flute, graced the front and back covers of Self-Realization magazine decades ago.) Tolstoy’s story was printed in the June 1938 issue of Paramahansaji’s Inner Culture magazine. Also included in this book of short stories is “The Godson,” which appeared in two parts in the October-December 1963 and January-March 1964 issues of Self-Realization Magazine. And Will Vinton made a delightful claymation film based on “Where Love Is, God Is” titled Martin the Cobbler.