The first volume of this collection includes memoirs, diaries and letters of S. A. Tolstoy, A. A. Fet, P. I. Tchaikovsky, I. E. Repin and others, recreating the portrait of L. N. Tolstoy before the period, which is usually called "years of spiritual fracture" in the biography of the writer. In the second volume of this collection, along with the classical memoirs of I. A. Bunin, V. G. Korolenko, M. Gorky, little-known memoirs - N. V. Davydova, M. A. Rybnikova, M. S. Sukhotin, without which the image of L. N. Tolstoy would be incomplete.