Note 194 — 1897

The Englishman, Aylmer Maude, translator of many works of Tolstoi into English. The agricultural colony which Tolstoi mentions was being founded at that time in England in the town of Purleigh in Essex. Maude settled in the neighbourhood of the colony and supported it materially. Maude himself and several representatives of this colony visited Tolstoi at this time. He wrote and published in England, a biography of Tolstoi, The Life of Tolstoi, by Aylmer Maude, two volumes, London, 1908 to 1910. Unfortunately this most detailed biography of Tolstoi in English, contains among other things the most perverted information about Tolstoi and an absolutely incorrect interpretation of his views, as well as of some of his acts. Tolstoi himself, learning before his death of the contents of some of these chapters which were sent to Yasnaya Polyana in manuscript, found the interpretation of the relation among people near to him so incorrect that he wrote about it to Maude.