In the summer of 1866, as Leo Tolstoy prepared for his serialized
novel War and Peace to be published as a single volume, he wrote to
illustrator Mikhail Bashilov, hoping to commission drawings for the new edition
of the novel, which he referred to by its original title, 1805. When
Bashilov questioned a detail of historical verisimilitude—shouldn’t the
turn-of-the-nineteenth century officers be wearing powdered wigs?—Tolstoy
responded:When I first began writing 1805, I discovered somewhere that
powder had been done away with at the beginning of [Czar] Alexander’s reign,
and I wrote on that basis; I later came across evidence, as you did, that it
was still used in 1805. …read more
Source: The New Republic
