Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910), was a Russian author, essayist, and philosopher whose contributions include two of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina.

Ernest Hilbert received his doctorate in English Language and Literature from Oxford University in 2000. He has served as editor for the Oxford Quarterly, Random House’s magazine Bold Type, and the Contemporary Poetry Review. His writing has appeared in American Scholar, The New Republic, The New Criterion, London Magazine, Yale Review, and many other publications. He is an antiquarian bookseller with the firm Bauman Rare Books, where he has had the pleasure of placing many Charles Dickens first editions of into private and public collections.