Childhood is the first novel in Leo Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy, which includes Youth and Boyhood.

Youth is a Russian classic and the third novel in Leo Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy, which includes Boyhood and Childhood.

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (9 September O.S. 28 August] 1828 - 20 November O.S. 7 November] 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction.

Youth is the third novel in Leo Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy, following Childhood and Boyhood. It was first published in the popular Russian literary magazine Sovremennik.

Childhood is the first published novel by Leo Tolstoy, released under the initials L. N. in the November 1852 issue of the popular Russian literary journal The Contemporary. It is the first in a series of three novels and is followed by Boyhood and Youth. Published when Tolstoy was just twenty-three years old, the book was an immediate success, earning notice from other Russian novelists including Ivan Turgenev, who heralded the young Tolstoy as a major up-and-coming figure in Russian literature.

Varvara Dobroselova and Makar Devushkin are second cousins twice-removed and live across from each other on the same street in terrible apartments. Devushkin's, for example, is merely a portioned-off section of the kitchen, and he lives with several other tenants, such as the Gorshkovs, whose son who groans in agonizing hunger almost the entire story and eventually dies. Devushkin and Dobroselova exchange letters attesting to their terrible living conditions and the former frequently squanders his money on gifts for her.