Among the most nuanced characters in world literature, Anna Karenina is the heroine of a novel that we can return to, again and again. But where did this fictional creation come from? Bob Blaisdell unravels Tolstoy's family, literary, and day-to-day life during the period that he conceived, drafted, abandoned, and revised Anna Karenina. Despite his initial distaste for the character, Tolstoy invested Anna with some of his own deepest and most conflicted feelings, and as Blaisdell suggests, the novel derives its strength from how Tolstoy's life and art intersect in such surprising ways.