Ilya Lvovich was born on May 22, 1866. Despite his abilities, he did not complete his education at the gymnasium and joined the Sumy Dragoon Regiment. In 1888, he married Sofia Nikolaevna Filosofova. Throughout different periods of his life, Ilya worked as a civil servant, a bank employee, an agent for the Russian social insurance company, and dealt with the liquidation of private estates.

In the early 20th century, Ilya Lvovich settled with his family in Kaluga, purchasing a house in the city center. To improve the family's financial situation, Sofia Nikolaevna took a job in 1909 at a private women's gymnasium run by Salova, where she taught choral singing to girls in grades III and V. During World War I, Ilya worked with the Red Cross and attempted to become a journalist, founding the newspaper 'Novaya Rossiya' in 1915.

In 1916, he emigrated to the USA, where he married the theosophist Nadezhda Klimentyevna Katulskaya. In America, Ilya earned a living by giving lectures on the works and philosophy of Tolstoy and participated in adaptations of the novels 'Anna Karenina' and 'Resurrection,' which turned out to be unsuccessful. Central to his literary legacy are the memoirs 'My Recollections,' which he translated into English, significantly reworking them. According to Lev Tolstoy's grandson, S. M. Tolstoy, Ilya was the most literarily gifted of all Tolstoy's children. In addition to his memoirs, he wrote numerous articles and stories, among which 'One Scoundrel Less' stands out, which Lev Tolstoy considered excellent.

Ilya Lvovich passed away on December 11, 1933, in New Haven, USA.