In this quarter-century update of Leo Tolstoy: An Annotated Bibliography of English Language Sources to 1978, authors David and Melinda Egan list the more than 1,200 books, essays, articles and doctoral dissertations written about the great Russian author from 1978 to 2003 (the 175th anniversary of Tolstoy's birth). In the twenty-five years since the first volume, there has been a remarkable growth in Tolstoy scholarship, including significant developments in feminist, psychological, linguistic, and intertextual studies. Most important, a number of seminal works have emerged which challenge the long-established critical view that Tolstoy was not one writer but two - Tolstoy the artist, who wrote the great classics War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and Tolstoy the moralist and sage, who, during the last three decades of his life, wrote didactic works to propagate his religious, moral and ethical views.

The book provides a comprehensive list of English language studies of Tolstoy's life, art, thought and influence in order to promote awareness of and access to those works that have been written about him since 1977. The authors also include descriptive (non-critical) annotations for the vast majority of sources, allowing users to determine which studies they might find particularly valuable. Divided into nine sections, the book addresses Tolstoy's novels, the major components of his non-literary life, and his legacy to the world. The book also includes a subject index of several hundred headings to help users navigate their way through its principal sections.