49 Fun Facts About Anna Karenina

Which earlier work did Tolstoy publicly refuse to call a novel, leaving Anna Karenina as his 'first'?

War and Peace was 'not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle', Tolstoy wrote, arguing that the best Russian books had never fitted European forms.

What does Levin give Kitty to read before their wedding?

His diary lays bare his past affairs and his lack of faith; Kitty weeps bitterly over it but marries him all the same.

What news does Anna give Vronsky shortly before he rides in the steeplechase?

That she is pregnant with his child; Vronsky urges her to leave her husband, and hours later her open panic when he falls in the race gives the affair away.

According to Anna Karenina's famous opening line, all happy what are alike?

Families: 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' The line inspired the Anna Karenina principle, that success needs everything to go right while any one flaw is enough to fail.

What is Anna Karenina's epigraph, taken from Romans 12:19?

'Vengeance is mine; I will repay' sounds like a threat, but in Romans Paul quotes it to tell believers not to take revenge themselves and to leave judgment to God.

Which task does Levin do all day beside his own peasants?

Mowing the meadow with a scythe works off his irritation after an argument with his half-brother; he loses track of time and comes home in high spirits.

What is Anna's lover Vronsky's profession?

Cavalry officer Vronsky lets a promising army career go for Anna: he turns down a posting to Tashkent and leaves the army to go abroad with her.

What is the occupation of Anna's husband, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin?

Senior statesman Karenin fears scandal more than betrayal: when Anna admits the affair, he demands only that she keep up appearances in public.

Which actress played Anna in the 2012 film of Anna Karenina, with Jude Law as her husband?

Keira Knightley had been Elizabeth Bennet in director Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice, and here he cast her Mr Darcy, Matthew Macfadyen, as Anna's brother instead of her lover.

Anna's brother opens the novel in trouble with his wife over an affair with whom?

The family's governess was his lover; when his wife finds out, the household falls into chaos until Anna arrives and persuades her to forgive him.

Which character is Anna's brother?

Stiva Oblonsky is forgiven once Anna has talked his wife round, and it is he who later plays matchmaker, inviting Levin and Kitty to the same dinner party.

Where does Levin go to find Kitty on the day he arrives in Moscow to propose?

A skating rink at the Zoological Gardens suits the country-bred Levin: he is a fine skater, and shows off by copying another man's run down the steps in his skates.

Why does Kitty first refuse Levin's proposal?

She hopes to marry Vronsky, and her mother has encouraged her; at the ball he dances with Anna instead, and Kitty is left heartbroken.

What is the name of Vronsky's mare, whose back is broken when he blunders in the steeplechase?

Frou-Frou falls at a ditch when Vronsky shifts clumsily in the saddle; he walks away unhurt, but the mare has to be shot.

Where does Kitty go to recover after Vronsky's rejection ruins her health?

A German spa puts her under the spell of the saintly Varenka, until her father arrives and hints that Varenka's pious guardian, Madame Stahl, only plays the invalid.

What does Karenin threaten to take from Anna if she continues her affair?

Their son Seryozha is the one hold he has over her: his letter warns her to think what awaits 'you and your son', and when she leaves he keeps the boy.

What does Vronsky do after Karenin forgives him at Anna's sickbed?

Tries to shoot himself: crushed by the wronged husband's generosity, he fires at his own chest, misses his heart and recovers.

What does Vronsky tell Anna's sister-in-law he lacks while Anna is still another man's wife?

A legal heir: by law, he says, any child of Anna's is Karenin's while she is still his wife, so a son could inherit neither Vronsky's name nor his property, and his work would die with him.

What hobby does Vronsky take up in Italy, without realising he lacks talent?

Painting is his new calling until a real artist, Mikhailov, paints Anna's portrait; Vronsky then abandons his own picture of her.

What does Countess Lidia Ivanovna tell Karenin's young son about his absent mother?

That she is dead, and that his father is a saint; the boy quietly refuses to believe it, and on his birthday Anna slips into the house to see him.

Which drug does Anna admit she can no longer sleep without?

Morphine quiets the question she cannot settle, whether to seek a divorce and remarry: 'When I think of it, I can't sleep without morphine,' she tells her sister-in-law.

How does Anna die?

She throws herself under a freight train at a station outside Moscow; on the day she met Vronsky a railwayman had been crushed at another station, and she had called it 'an omen of evil'.

Which future James Bond played Vronsky opposite Claire Bloom in the BBC's 1961 Anna Karenina?

Sean Connery played Vronsky a year before Dr. No made him 007; the recording was thought lost until a copy turned up in 2010.

Where does Vronsky go to fight at the end of the novel, after Anna's death?

The Serbian revolt against the Turks gives him a cause to die for: he sets off as a volunteer, taking with him a squadron raised at his own expense.

What does Levin conclude after talking to a peasant?

That the meaning of life is to serve God comes to him when a peasant praises a neighbour who 'lives for his soul'; it ends a despair so deep that Levin had hidden a rope for fear of hanging himself.

Of what illness does Levin's brother Nikolai die, nursed by Kitty?

Consumption kills him slowly in a provincial hotel, where Kitty takes over the sickroom that Levin can hardly bear to enter; straight after the death, a doctor tells her she is expecting a child.

What does the jealous Levin do when a young visitor flirts openly with his pregnant wife?

Asks him to leave the house: young Veslovsky is driven to the station that day, and promptly turns up at Anna and Vronsky's estate, where he flirts with Anna too.

Which American novelist, asked to name the three greatest novels, reportedly answered 'Anna Karenina' three times?

William Faulkner's quip now helps to sell the book: Penguin's Pevear and Volokhonsky edition opens its cover copy with his verdict that it is the best novel ever written.

Which fellow Russian novelist published the 1877 essay 'Anna Karenina as a Fact of Special Importance'?

Fyodor Dostoevsky told his readers it was perfect as a work of art, and that nothing in the European literature of the day could compare with it.

Whose 1901 English translation of Anna Karenina was later revised by Kent and Berberova for the Modern Library?

Constance Garnett had met Tolstoy in person, visiting him at home on her first trip to Russia in 1894, and went on to put some seventy volumes of Russian writing into English.

Which friend of Tolstoy, long resident in Russia, translated Anna Karenina with his wife in 1918?

Aylmer Maude knew his author well: he played tennis and chess with Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana and later wrote his friend's biography, while his wife Louise shared the translating.

Why do some translators call the novel Anna Karenin, without the final 'a'?

English surnames have no gender, so the 'a' that Russian adds for a woman looked needless to them; Nabokov agreed, insisting that in English she is simply Mrs Karenin.

Which actress played Anna in both a 1927 silent version titled Love and the 1935 MGM sound film?

Greta Garbo's silent version was retitled Love, a name that played on gossip about her romance with co-star John Gilbert, and it went out with two endings, Tolstoy's and a happy one.

Who played Anna in Julien Duvivier's 1948 British film, with Ralph Richardson as Karenin?

Vivien Leigh, the screen's Scarlett O'Hara, could not make it pay: Alexander Korda's lavish production earned back only a fraction of its cost in British cinemas.

Which Hollywood star's company produced the 1997 Anna Karenina starring Sophie Marceau?

Mel Gibson had directed Marceau in Braveheart two years earlier, and his company Icon had already made director Bernard Rose's Beethoven film, Immortal Beloved.

Who wrote the screenplay for Joe Wright's 2012 film of Anna Karenina?

Tom Stoppard carved the script from a novel of some 950 pages, and Wright first meant to film it on location in Russia, scouting St Petersburg before he changed his plans late in preparation.

What bold stylistic choice did Joe Wright make for his 2012 film of Anna Karenina?

Setting it inside a theatre came late: weary of locations that other films had already used, Wright built a dilapidated playhouse on a Shepperton soundstage and ran almost every scene through it.

Which Oscar did the 2012 Anna Karenina win?

Best Costume Design went to Jacqueline Durran, who dressed the 1870s story in gowns modelled on 1950s couture rather than aim for strict period accuracy.

Venice had no Golden Lion yet in 1935, so which prize did MGM's Anna Karenina win there as best foreign film?

The Mussolini Cup, named for Italy's dictator, was the festival's top award from 1934 until 1942; the Golden Lion arrived only in 1949, after Fascism had fallen.

Who popularised the 'Anna Karenina principle' in his 1997 book Guns, Germs and Steel?

Jared Diamond used it to explain why only 14 large mammals were ever domesticated: a species that fails any one test stays wild, which is why people ride horses and not zebras.

Which sister of Kitty is married to Anna's brother?

Dolly forgives her husband at Anna's urging, and later goes out of her way to visit the outcast Anna, defending her to everyone even though the luxury she finds there leaves her uneasy.

Who is Princess Betsy Tverskaya?

Vronsky's cousin and Anna's friend, Betsy hosts the salon where the affair takes root; yet once Anna is an outcast she keeps her distance, despite having had affairs of her own.

What does Levin's half-brother Koznyshev fail to bring himself to do on a mushroom-picking walk?

Propose to Varenka: both of them expect it, but at the last second he asks her about mushrooms instead, and they know the moment will never return.

Which nervous habit of Karenin's makes Anna beg him to stop?

Cracking his knuckles is how Karenin steadies himself before he warns her about Vronsky; 'Oh, please, don't do that, I do so dislike it,' Anna says.

What is Vronsky spending lavishly to build on his country estate when Anna's sister-in-law visits?

A hospital for the district is his showpiece, fitted with the newest equipment; when his guest asks about a maternity ward, he cuts her short and says it is only for the sick.

What was Tolstoy's mood as he finished Anna Karenina's final instalments?

Anguished; he had come to hate the book: 'I loathe what I have written,' he wrote with the proofs on his table, wishing it could all be scrapped and rewritten.

What sudden danger to Kitty and their baby makes Levin realise how much he loves his son?

A lightning storm catches them out in the woods; until then Levin had felt more apprehension and pity than love for the baby, and only his terror for them shows him otherwise.

What prompted Penguin to print 800,000 extra copies of a new Anna Karenina translation in 2004?

Oprah's Book Club chose it, which meant little to the translators in France: told the press run was growing by 800,000, Larissa Volokhonsky asked, '800,000 of what?'

What divorce evidence does Karenin extract from Anna, only for his lawyer to call it insufficient?

Vronsky's love letters are seized from Anna's desk after Karenin meets Vronsky on his own doorstep; the lawyer explains that the law wants the lovers caught in the act.