Tolstoy had this notion that his wife was responsible for running the estate. He invited a large group of people over for a shooting-party (ducks and geese) and started putting people into sleighs, with his wife's younger sister Tatyana next to him. "Where am I supposed to sit?" Sofia asked. "Oh, you're not coming with us," Tolstoy replied to his wife.

Imagine how much further thrilled she must have been when, as his editor, she read the famous hunting scene in War and Peace and the description of Natasha Rostova dancing and enchanting everyone, knowing full well that her sister Tatyana was the inspiration for Natasha Rostova.

Imagine also how thrilled she was when Tolstoy said all of his books were essentially "free domain" and that he would not enforce any author's rights of any sort, when the income from his books provided the money needed to balance the books of their family finances? Or when he repeatedly and insistently tried to sell everything he owned despite having 14 children with her? Or having to read about the horrible wife in the Kreutzer Sonata, whose correspondence to her was so strong she had to write a refutation of the work?

She had to also handle the throngs of crazies, beggars, cripples and mystics who kept trying to see Tolstoy. Oh, and she had to see the peasant girl that Tolstoy had an affair with for years on a day to day basis.