I was recently gifted the Simon and Schuster Inner Sanctum version of War and Peace from 1942. This is a neat edition that has the benefit of being a time capsule and having some assorted extras that aren't in other versions I have. It is the Maude translation, but I thought there were enough things in it to warrant a post.
It has a list of key dates and events that mirrors what is in the Maude version, with the difference that the Inner Sanctum gives the new and old style dates for each event so they match what Gibian does (though the difference being the Inner Sanctum does this all in one page instead of just the start of each book). There are also three nice little maps before the start of the book, one of the campaign of 1805 with Olmutz at the top of the map and an arrow point that Ulm is 140 miles away at the bottom left of the map (this map is reprinted at the start of Book Two). The second map is of Napoleon in Russia in 1812 (this map is reprinted at the very end), with lines representing the advance and retreat. The Baltic Sea is at the top left and Moscow is in the top right (we can see Tilsit and Friedland, but not St Petersburg). In the bottom right we see a map of Moscow. It even includes where the Bazdeev and Rostov houses would be (a bigger version of the map is printed before the start of Book Eleven). A map of Austerlitz is printed before the start of Book Three, with the road to Olmutz appearing at the top center and Sokolnitz appearing towards the bottom. Pratzen is in about the center. A map of Campaign of 1807 is printed before the start of Book Five, with Tilsit and the Niemen in the top right and Warsaw in the bottom center. It does not contain any marching or battles formations. There is a separate campaign of 1812 map before the start of Book Nine, with Ryazan in the top right, Smolensk (and Bald Hills) at about the center, an arrow pointing towards St. Petersburg in the area of the top left, and Prussia (and Tilsit) at the bottom left. The Tolstoy map of Borodino is before the start of Book Ten. However, the most interesting maps are printed on the inside covers themselves. The front inside cover has a larger version of the Napoleon in Russia map, with London and Paris appearing on the far left and the Black Sea appearing on the bottom right (with Crimea and Sevastopol visible). St. Petersburg (with now Leningrad appearing below it) is visible towards the top right. The Ottoman Empire is visible at the bottom. The back cover has Napoleon in Russia 1812 paralleled with Hitler's invasion in 1941-1942 (because of the date, we don't see the retreat). Hitler's invasion, which I am no expert in, works much more vertically (the red swastikas show where the army was when the invasion started in June 22, 1941 and then November 27, 1941, the furthest the Nazis advanced, which was within 10 miles of Moscow. It does not have troop formations) on the map compared to Napoleon's horizontal invasion. I'd love to see one with Charles XII's invasion put side by side as well.
The Inner Sanctum gives the principal characters in both family groups (The Bezukhovs, The Rostovs, The Bolkonskis, The Kuragins, and The Drubetskoys) and, more interestingly, in my opinion, in order of appearance (even adding asterisks to "the most important characters", of which there are twenty, the last being Platon Karataev. Dolokhov and the elder Nataly Rostova do not receive asterisks, but Mlle Bourienne and Koko Bolkonsky do.). This list includes 69 characters (including Nikolai's kids in the epilogue, Andrew and Natasha) and has a short description and where they are introduced. This is probably the best character list I have seen in an edition of War and Peace (both character lists are, for some reason, reprinted at the back of the book).
There are also some quotes about War and Peace, several of them from 1941. The chapters themselves seem to follow the Gibian breaks and have the Maude chapter summaries in both the table of contents and the chapters themselves. The Maude notes appear as footnotes inside the chapters.
The novel itself is preceded by a foreword, a translator's preface, and notes to the opening chapters. The foreword is written by Clifton Fadiman and is 21 pages, divided into two parts. I will hit the highlights here. The first section discusses the novel's literary merits and has all the expected pomp and praise that you would expect. Fadiman then decides that it is important to question and determine why the novel is great, and to do so, one must discover what it is about. He tries to summarize the novel and demonstrates the problem in doing so and how Tolstoy's view of his own novel seemed to change with time, saying, "In one sense he put into this book everything that interested him, and everything interested him." Fadiman discuses Percy Lubbock's view of the book as two books and how the story of the aristocratic families does not mesh with the grand "war and peace" sections of the novel, ultimately arguing against it by saying that they fit together with Tolstoy's historical framework, in which collective action is the sum of "the individual tendencies of men." Interestingly, Fadiman also, perhaps unwittingly, argues against the edition's cast of characters that label Pierre as the central character of the novel, by calling it a "novel without a hero" and that Pierre is no more of the hero than Andrew, saying "For in the eye of nature there are neither heroes nor villains, but merely striving human beings." The greatest literary qualities of the novel for Fadiman is "its inclusiveness, its naturalness, and its timelessness", arguing that the omissions (such as lack of focus on the peasant class or inability to talk about sex) are overpowered by what it does have. There is a strain of thought of Fadiman's that I certainly disagree with, when he talks about how Tolstoy loves his characters and doesn't seem to judge them, as I think it is pretty clear that Tolstoy finds the majority of characters in the novel ridiculous, immoral, or at least amoral, and he explicitly judges their personalities and character in the text and borders, at least at times, on farce rather than "sympathy". Fadiman does touch on the simplicity of many of the key scenes and how, despite the detail that Tolstoy packs into it, it isn't overwritten and it doesn't feel false like it could in novels of more contemporary writers. Fadiman dedicates a section to its defects, which includes Pierre being blind to Helene's interest being for his money, the pacing of some sections, the character of Denisov, and the inability to penetrate darkness like Dostoevsky (who is repeatedly brought up in the foreword). There is a long section in the novel that discusses the Russian soul and that why Russian literature was great before the revolution instead of after was because of the guilt of serfdom and Tsarism. The argument is a little bizarre and wouldn't stand today, but it is followed by his attempt to discuss Tolstoy's view of history. Simply, Fadiman has Tolstoy believing that we can't know the reason for historical events happening and thus must reject explanations. Change and Genius are removed and the latter is particularly destroyed in the representation of the personhood of Napoleon. After discussing Tolstoy's view of warfare and how battles are won, Fadiman brings up an interesting point of whether technological advances (that have obviously become even more prevalent and taken grand leaps and strides) have rendered Tolstoy's views obsolete ("Tolstoy, I think, would reply that any change is only apparent and only temporary").
Part two of the foreword is a comparison between what is in the novel and the contemporary (February 1942) standpoint in which Fadiman was writing, particularly in relation to Hitler and the repetitious nature of history (interestingly, to emphasize, Fadiman is writing at a time when not only the outcome of the entire war was uncertain, but the campaign against Russia was uncertain, even painting a dire picture of what will happen if Hitler wins). The most obvious parallels between Napoleon's invasion and Hitler's for Fadiman is Hitler's inability to invade England and his treaty with Russia that he then breaks (a discussion of collaborators and allies follows as well). He also draws parallels in political reaction, saying we have our own Bilibins, Pierres, and Anna Scherers. There are further parallels, particularly the guerrilla warfare of the Russians, that are interesting and again Fadiman probably buys a little too much into national character, especially in relation to the Russians (to be fair, Fadiman acknowledges that these will be picked apart by readers). Much more correct is Fadiman when talks about how it is easy to associate the war with the big names such as Hitler, Churchill,, and Roosevelt, but in fifty years time (more than fifty for us now), those names will be seen more clearly as being operated under circumstances than necessarily the movers of the events (even Hitler, today is seen as the embodiment of evil, but perhaps less as the prime mover of the Nazi party and World War II, but the figurehead and as more ridiculous, parodies have helped, than scary, while the undercurrent of antisemitism, white nationalism, and economic malaise being the real scary forces that exist in relation to Nazism and ethnic violence today). Fadiman discusses the personality of Hitler and the Nazis, comparing them to Napoleon, Anatole, and Berg, and how superstition abounds in the personalities of each.
After Fadiman's foreword, there is a Translator's Preface written by Aylmer Maude. This begins with a short overview of Tolstoy's life before writing War and Peace before discussing it as the place "the modern novel" begins. "With him the psychological explanation is the important thing. What is important is not what his people do, it is why they do it that matters." We then get several quotes praising the novel and some talk about censors, which is, for Maude, a contributing factor for Tolstoy abandoning talking directly about the Decembrists and why "the fundamental wrongness and consequent rottenness of the system" doesn't come out more fully in the novel. The preface ends with an instruction on how to pronounce names.
The Notes to the Opening Chapters, also written by Aylmer Maude sets up the campaign that opens the novel in 1805, with a brief description of how Napoleon became the Emperor of the French and the political events, such as the murder of Duc d'Enghien, that precede the novel. The most interesting section in this brief rundown is the Abbe Piatoli, who is Abbe Morio, the tutor of Adam Czartoryski (who readers will remember as the one Andrei assigns as being the kind of person who decides the fates of nations), who had a plan of perpetual peace that influenced Alexander's reactionary Holy Alliance, which Maude ascribes as being a predecessor to the League of Nations (which clearly failed and after World War II, became the United Nations).
On the text itself, compared to the Wordsworth Maude edition, the Inner Sanctum edition has the longer em dash and uses the double quotation mark (") rather than the singular ('). It also uses American spelling rather than the English spelling of the Wordsworth edition. The variations in the first chapter (or before the first line break in the Inner Sanctum edition) are as follows (IS meaning Inner Sanctum, WM meaning Wordsworth): IS adds Kuragin in initial mention of Vasili, IS has a period following St in St Petersburg (and has a note that says Now Leningrad), WM has elite in italics and an accent mark over the e, IS has a comma after breeches (probably showing Oxford Comma usage over Simple Comma usage as the same happens after scented, so I will no longer note this comma difference), WM has an accent mark of fete, IS has an accent over the A in A propos, no comma after respect before mingled in IS, IS capitalizes her in her Majesty (this happens again later), IS uses a colon instead of a dash after "so she said", IS does not space out anyone like WM does, IS uses a semicolon after Don't Joke instead of the comma WM has, and IS calls her Lise instead of Lisa. After the text of the novel, Tolstoy's essay "Some Words About War and Peace" is printed.
