The Best Translation of War and Peace (and the Best Free One)

War and Peace is the rare classic where the free translation is also one of the best: Aylmer and Louise Maude knew Tolstoy personally, translated with his cooperation, and earned his endorsement — "better translators… could not be invented." Their version is public domain and on our shelf. Among moderns, Anthony Briggs (2005) is the most readable English War and Peace ever made; Pevear & Volokhonsky (2007) is the fidelity-first choice that keeps Tolstoy's repetitions and all the French; Rosemary Edmonds (1957) is the quiet classic in between.

Here's what actually differs between them — it's more than style — and how to pick your regiment.

The real differences

Three decisions separate War and Peace translations. The French problem: Tolstoy wrote whole conversations in French (his aristocrats' language) — P&V keep it on the page with footnotes, preserving the effect and slowing you down; Briggs and the Maudes translate it inline, smoothing the ride. Repetition: Tolstoy repeats words deliberately, like hammer blows; P&V keep the hammer, Briggs varies the vocabulary the way English prefers. Register: Briggs is briskly contemporary (his soldiers swear like soldiers, which some readers love and some find too English); the Maudes are dignified without dust; P&V can feel angular — the price of tracing the Russian closely. Accuracy isn't really the contest; all of these are faithful. The contest is what Tolstoy should sound like in English, and there are three defensible answers.

The case for the free one

The Maudes aren't a compromise — they're a first-rank translation that happens to be old enough to be free. Aylmer Maude wrote Tolstoy's biography; Louise translated the fiction with him; Tolstoy read and blessed their work. Their English is clear, warm, and nearly invisible, and the standard scholarly editions of Tolstoy in English were built on their text for decades. On a book this long, the practical argument matters too: thirty-plus hours is a real investment to make on an unbrowsed purchase — starting free tonight, then buying Briggs or P&V if you want a second voice for the reread, is a strategy nobody regrets.

Choosing in one minute

Want maximum readability and momentum: Briggs. Want the texture of the Russian — French passages, repetitions, all of it: P&V. Want the version Tolstoy himself signed off on, free, tonight: the Maudes. One practical note for any choice: the book's real difficulty isn't prose but names — every character carries three plus a French variant — and that problem is translation-proof; solve it with a cast list or a companion you can ask, not with a different translator.

A note on abridgments

Skip them. The "war" chapters and the essays people abridge away are where the book's argument lives, and the cutting is always someone else's theory of which half matters. Tolstoy's length is load-bearing — and, as readers keep discovering, faster going than its reputation.

Frequently asked questions