About the author Ernest J Simmons
(1903-1972)

(1968) Ernest J. Simmons, distinguished author and critic, was the initiator of Russian Area Studies in the United States, and taught at Cornell, Harvard, and then at Columbia, where he was Professor of Russian Literature and Chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages from 1946 to 1959. He has, most recently been Senior Fellow and, for a short time, Acting Director of the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University. He has made many extended trips to Russia and has lectured widely in the United States, England, Europe, and India. His many notable books include biographies of Pushkin and Chekhov, a critical study of Dostoevsky, and works on Russian literature in general. His most famous book is the definitive biography, 'Leo Tolstoy', to which Introduction To Tolstoy's Writings is the perfect complement.