He was born in Järvamaa, in the municipality of Albu as the son of a farmer. Tammsaare came from poor background, but he managed to collect enough money for his education. He studied in Väike-Maarja and Tartu in Hugo Treffner's Gymnasium, and afterwards at the University of Tartu, where he studied law. Tammsaare's studies were interrupted by tuberculosis in 1911. He spent over a year in a sanatorium in Caucasus - his only journey abroad - and the following six years in his brother's farm in Koitjärve, Estonia, reading works of Cervantes, Shakespeare and Homer.
In 1918, when Estonia become independent, Tammsaare had moved to Tallinn. In Tallinn, Tammsaare wrote the works which have gained him a permanent place in Estonian literature. Although Tammsaare took his subjects from the history and life of Estonian people, his novels have deep connections with the ideas of Henri Bergson, Jung and Freud, and such writers as Knut Hamsun and André Gide.
Tammsaare's early works are characterized by rural "poetic" realism. Some of his stories also reflected the atmosphere of the revolutionary year of 1905. During his second period from 1908 to 1919 he wrote several short urban novels and collections of miniatures. In "Poiss ja liblik" (1915, The Boy and the Butterfly) Tammsaare showed the influence of Oscar Wilde.
Selected works: