Both Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) and his wife Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya (1844-1919) were prolific letterwriters.
Lev Nikolaevich wrote approximately 10,000 letters over his lifetime -- 840 of these addressed to his wife. Letters written by (or to) Sofia Andreevna over her lifetime also numbered in the thousands. When Tolstaya published Lev Nikolaevich's letters to her, she declined to include any of her 644 letters to her husband. The absence of half their correspondence obscured the underlying significance of many of his comments to her and occasionally led the reader to wrong...