The American magazine The World's Advance Thought as a source of Leo Tolstoy's A Calendar of Wisdom (on materials of the writer's library at Yasnaya Polyana)

The article determines the sources of A Calendar of Wisdom, the collection of wise thoughts compiled by Leo Tolstoy in 19041906. This article presents marginal notes on the pages of an American magazine The World's Advance Thought made by Leo Tolstoy which have not been published yet. On the basis of marginal notes left by the writer on the pages of the issues of Lucy Mallory's magazine the sources of seventy four sayings translated for A Calendar of Wisdom were identified. The years of publishing of the magazine The World's Advance Thought for Leo Tolstoy were the time when he selected sources for compilation of sages' sayings collections: Wise Thoughts for Every Day (1903), A Calendar of Wisdom (1904), For Every Day (1906), Path of Life (1910). A Calendar of Wisdom seems to be the largest Tolstoy's collection in terms of volume and selection of sources in comparison with all other collections: it contains the greatest number of wise sayings and the most varied amount of their authors. The World's Advance Thought was one of the sources of A Calendar of Wisdom. Lucy Aaron Mallory was the publisher of the magazine, and sent to Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana not only issues of her magazine but also letters. Leo Tolstoy replied to some of her letters. The attention to the work of the publisher of The World's Advance Thought which Leo Tolstoy demonstrated shows how receptive the writer was to all the printed issues sent to Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy, after reading different issues of Lucy Mallory's magazine, found this edition extremely interesting, despite the fact that the publisher of the magazine was a supporter of spiritualism, the craze which Leo Tolstoy largely decried. The writer took sayings which he had approved and admired from the magazine, and ignored, and in many cases even expressed his disapproval to the sayings with spiritualistic content. There are still more than seventy issues of The World's Advance Thought in Leo Tolstoy's library at Yasnaya Polyana.

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