Countess Tolstoy (1844-1919) was married to Leo Tolstoy for forty-eight years. She first started keeping a diary when sixteen and continued until a month before her death. It is sometimes said that her diaries are more valuable for what they say about Tolstoy than her. Either way. they are remarkable and perhaps show in the end that despite the turbulence of their marriage, in the words of Professor R. F. Christian, the foremost Tolstoy scholar, ‘She might have been happier with another man. Another woman might have been happier with him. It must be doubted, though, whether another woman would have made him happier.’