Note E — PREFACE BY VASSILI SPIRIDONOV

The manuscript of the work, as was said above, is among Vengerov's documents. It is catalogued in the first "collection" of autobiographies under N 2740, and in a special catalogue its card has a short abstract of the most important biographical data. (Professor S. A. Vengerov, Critical Biographical Dictionary of Russian Authors and Men of Letters, second edition, Vol. I; Preliminary List of Russian Authors and Men of Letters and Preliminary Information about Them, Petrograd, 1915, pages xix and xxv.) The manuscript is in a cover of ordinary writing-paper on which is written in S. A. T.'s handwriting: A Short Autobiography of Countess Sophie Tolstoy. The manuscript itself is typewritten and occupies twelve half-sheets of ordinary writing-paper written on both sides, or twenty-four pages, of which the last page contains only four lines. At the end of the manuscript is the date: "28 October, 1913"; place: "Yasnaya Polyana," and signature: "Countess Sophie Tolstoy." All this is in typewriting.