Sophia had been acquainted with her future husband, Leo Tolstoy, from childhood; he was 16 years her senior and had befriended her mother when he was a boy.

On the eve of their wedding, Tolstoy gave Sophia his diaries that detailed his sexual relations with female servants.

[3] (In Anna Karenina, 34-year-old Konstantin Levin, a semi-autobiographical character, behaves similarly, asking his 19-year-old fiancée Kitty to read his diaries and learn of his past transgressions.)

The diaries included the fact that Tolstoy had fathered a child by a woman who remained on the Yasnaya Polyana estate.

[6] Sophia acted as copyist of War and Peace, copying and editing the manuscript seven times from beginning to end at home at night by candlelight after the children and servants had gone to bed, using an inkwell pen and sometimes requiring a magnifying glass to read her husband's notes.

[3] Tolstaya struggled with her husband's increasing devotion to spiritual matters and his neglect of their family life.

[12] In 1910, at the age of 82, Leo Tolstoy abruptly left Sophia, accompanied by their daughter Alexandra and his doctor, Dushan Makovicki (Dušan Makovický).

[8] Following the death of her husband, Sophia continued to live in Yasnaya Polyana and survived the Russian Revolution in relative peace.

She obtained an audience with Tsar Alexander III in 1891, who accepted that the novel be included in a broader publication of Leo Tolstoy's books.