2 Leo Tolstoy first editions are documented on this shelf, from Anna Karenina (1886) to War and Peace (1886) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Leo Tolstoy title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Leo Tolstoy copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Anna Karenina — 1886 · Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.The first English-language edition was published by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, in 1886, translated by Nathan Haskell Dole. First-issue points include sheets bulking to about 35 millimeters, floral-patterned endpapers, the imprint address '13 Astor Place' on the title page, no advertisements at the front of the book, and five pages of advertisements at the rear that do not list any other Russian titles.…. First edition in English, preceding the first British edition. Later Crowell printings are textually identical but carry expanded advertisement pages listing additional Russian authors; a copy without the plain, Russian-title-free five-page ad section is a later printing rather than the true first issue.
War and Peace — 1886 · William S. GottsbergerThe Clara Bell translation, rendered from a French version rather than directly from the Russian, was issued in the United States by William S. Gottsberger, New York, as six small octavo volumes bound in three two-volume installments across 1886, beginning in January. The title page states the translation lineage explicitly: 'Translated into French by a Russian Lady, and from the French by Clara Bell; revised and…. The Gottsberger (New York) edition holds clear priority: its three two-volume installments appeared across 1886 beginning in January, well ahead of any English edition in Britain. Vizetelly & Co. of London did not issue an independent translation but pirated Bell's Gottsberger text without attribution, publishing it in three volumes in October 1886, as recorded in the Publisher's Circular of 15 October 1886; it…. The later authorized translations made directly from the Russian (by Nathan Haskell Dole for Crowell in 1889, and Constance Garnett's 1904 version) are textually independent of the 1886 Bell/Gottsberger edition; a modern reprint using Garnett's, Maude's, or a later translator's text is unrelated to the first English edition.

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