Stand at the threshold of adolescence with Nikolai Irtenev, and watch the certainties of childhood dissolve into the confusions of youth. Read Leo Tolstoy’s luminous memoir-novel completely free online.
Published in 1854, Boyhood is the second volume of Leo Tolstoy’s autobiographical trilogy, following Childhood and preceding Youth. It is the least celebrated of the three works, overshadowed by the freshness of the first and the urgency of the third. This is unjust. Boyhood is Tolstoy at his most introspective, his most psychologically precise, his most tender. It captures that peculiar period of human life when the world expands beyond the family estate, when friendships become freighted with significance, when the first intimations of mortality shadow the brightest days.
Nikolai Irtenev is now fourteen. His mother is dead. His father is distant. He has left the rural estate of his childhood for the confusion of Moscow, with its tutors, its balls, its hierarchies of age and class. He is no longer a child, not yet a man. He falls in and out of love. He admires his older brother and resents him. He commits small cruelties and is haunted by guilt. He tries to be good and fails. He tries to be wise and fails. He tries to understand himself and succeeds only in discovering how difficult self-understanding truly is.
On this page, you can experience the most sensitive portrait of adolescence ever written by a novelist who never forgot what it felt like to be young. We offer the complete 1854 text for online reading.
Book Info
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Title | Boyhood |
| Author | Leo Tolstoy |
| Year of Publication | 1854 |
| Genre | Autobiographical Fiction, Bildungsroman |
| Language | English Translation (Original: Russian) |
| Legal Status | Public Domain Worldwide |
| Format | Online Reading |
Read Boyhood Online
Climb the stairs of the Moscow house and enter the room where Nikolai dreams and despairs. Begin this intimate masterpiece by returning to nineteenth-century Russia interactively below.
This preview introduces the transition from country to city, from innocence to experience. However, the full, nuanced narrative—the friendship with Dmitry Nekhlyudov, the humiliation of the examination, the first stirrings of adult love, and the persistent, unappeasable voice of conscience—is available in the complete text for our subscribers.
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About the Novel Boyhood
Boyhood is a book about the birth of self-consciousness. Nikolai Irtenev, at fourteen, discovers that he is not simply a consciousness observing the world but an object of observation, a self among selves, a person whose actions are judged and whose character is evaluated. This discovery is both liberating and devastating.
The Structure of Memory
Tolstoy does not narrate Nikolai’s boyhood as it happened; he narrates it as it is remembered. The events are filtered through the consciousness of the adult narrator, who understands what the boy could not: the significance of small gestures, the weight of casual words, the irreversible consequences of seemingly trivial choices. This double perspective—the boy experiencing, the man understanding—gives the narrative its characteristic texture of tenderness and regret.
The Death of the Mother
Boyhood opens in the shadow of the death that concluded Childhood. Nikolai’s mother is absent, remembered, mourned. Her absence structures the emotional landscape of the book. His father remarries; the stepmother is kind but foreign. The family estate is sold. Childhood, with its fixed points of reference, has receded beyond recovery. Nikolai is adrift.
The Tutor Karl Ivanovich
Karl Ivanovich, the gentle German tutor who appeared in Childhood, is dismissed early in Boyhood. His departure is a small tragedy, rendered by Tolstoy with exquisite restraint. Nikolai loves Karl Ivanovich, but he does not protest his dismissal; he is too old for such demonstrations, too conscious of the opinions of others. He watches his tutor leave and feels his childhood leaving with him.
The Friendship with Nekhlyudov
Dmitry Nekhlyudov, who will appear in Tolstoy’s later work as a recurring figure of moral seriousness, enters Nikolai’s life in Boyhood. He is older, more certain, more virtuous. He challenges Nikolai to be better: to tell the truth, to resist vanity, to serve others. Nikolai admires him, imitates him, and secretly resents him. Their friendship is Tolstoy’s portrait of the formative influence, the older friend who sets a standard the younger can never quite meet.
The Examination
The climax of Boyhood is Nikolai’s university entrance examination. He has prepared inadequately; his tutors have failed him; his own vanity has distracted him. He sits before the examiners, his mind blank, his heart pounding. He fails the mathematics examination and is granted a conditional pass only through family connections. The humiliation is permanent. He has been exposed as a fraud, a boy pretending to knowledge he does not possess. This scene, drawn directly from Tolstoy’s own experience, is one of the most painfully honest passages in Russian literature.
The Birth of Conscience
Throughout Boyhood, Nikolai is haunted by guilt. He is cruel to a servant; he lies to his grandmother; he harbors resentments he cannot justify. Each transgression is followed by agonies of remorse. Tolstoy, who would later devote his life to the elaboration of a rigorous Christian ethics, traces the origins of moral consciousness to these early, apparently minor failures. Conscience is not born in moments of great temptation but in the small, daily betrayals of the ideal self.
Why Read the Novel Boyhood Today?
Because it tells the truth about adolescence. Not the melodramatic truth of rebellion and crisis, but the quiet truth of confusion and longing. Nikolai is not a hero; he is not a victim; he is not a cautionary tale. He is a boy, trying to become a man, failing more often than he succeeds, sustained by friendships he does not fully appreciate and memories he does not yet understand. He is every adolescent who has ever looked in the mirror and wondered who is looking back.
FAQ
Do I need to read Childhood first?
It is highly recommended. Boyhood assumes familiarity with the characters and events of the first volume. The two books function as a continuous narrative; reading them in order deepens the emotional resonance of both.
Is this autobiographical?
Yes, in its essentials. Tolstoy lost his mother at two, moved to Kazan with his brothers, was educated by German and French tutors, and failed his university entrance examinations. Nikolai’s experiences are Tolstoy’s experiences, transformed by art but grounded in memory.
Is this part of a trilogy?
Yes. The three volumes—Childhood, Boyhood, Youth—were published separately between 1852 and 1857. They are available individually and as a collected edition.
Is it suitable for young readers?
Absolutely. The prose is clear, the incidents are accessible, and the psychological insights are presented without abstraction. Many readers first encounter Tolstoy through these autobiographical works.
Can I read it on my phone?
Yes. The chapters are short, the sentences are direct, and the emotional arc is compelling. It is the perfect introduction to the greatest novelist of the nineteenth century.