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Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time Paperback – August 26, 2012

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A magnificent one-volume abridgement of one of the greatest literary biographies of our time Joseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume Dostoevsky is widely recognized as the best biography of the writer in any language―and one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century. Now Frank's monumental, 2,500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume with a new preface by the author. Carefully preserving the original work's acclaimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time illuminates the writer's works―from his first novel Poor Folk to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov ―by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.

• Print length 984 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Princeton University Press
• Publication date August 26, 2012
• Dimensions 6.25 x 2.5 x 9.25 inches
• ISBN-10 0691155992
• ISBN-13 978-0691155999
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Editorial Reviews

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"Although the pace has quickened, the serene and magnificent persistence that Joseph Frank brought to his five volumes resonates fully in this distilled story. If (as Frank tells us) Dostoevsky 'felt ideas,' then Frank 'feels biography' at any scale, with a perfect sense of proportion." --Caryl Emerson, Princeton University, author of The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

"[This book] ensures Frank's status as the definitive literary biographer of one of the best fiction writers ever." --David Foster Wallace

"The editing and deep thought that have gone into this magnificent one-volume condensation of Frank's magnum opus are to be greatly admired. This is the best biography of Dostoevsky, the best reading of some of the major novels, the best cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia. Just the best." --Robin Feuer Miller, Brandeis University, author of Dostoevsky's Unfinished Journey

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; Revised edition (August 26, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 984 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691155992
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691155999
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 2.5 x 9.25 inches
• #95 in History & Criticism of Russian & Soviet Literature
• #1,859 in Author Biographies

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Joseph frank.

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Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865

Volume three of one of the greatest literary biographies of our time

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Joseph Frank’s award-winning, five-volume Dostoevsky is widely recognized as the best biography of the Russian novelist in any language and one of the greatest literary biographies ever written. In this monumental work, Frank blends biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism to illuminate Dostoevsky’s works and set them in their personal, historical, and ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work. This volume begins with the writer’s return to Saint Petersburg after a ten-year Siberian exile and traces how his engagement in the cultural and social ferment of Russia in the early 1860s led to his discovery of the themes that would underlie his mature masterpieces.

"A narrative of such compelling precision, thoroughness and insight as to give the reader a sense not just of acquaintanceship, but of complete identification with Dostoevsky, of looking through his eyes and understanding with his mind."—Helen Muchnic, Boston Globe

"This is unquestionably the best account we have of Dostoevsky in his time."—Donald Fanger, New Republic

"Will rightly be considered one of the finest achievements of American literary scholarship."—René Wellek, Washington Post

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The Best Fiction Books » Literary Figures

The best fyodor dostoevsky books, recommended by alex christofi.

Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life

His father had clawed his way up into the minor aristocracy, but Fyodor Dostoevsky chose to live the life of an impecunious author. He was sentenced to death, but his execution was stayed and he spent years in a Siberian labour camp instead. His books are about human compassion, but he was a difficult man who had trouble with his own personal relationships. Alex Christofi , author of a brilliant new biography of Dostoevsky , one of Russia's greatest novelists, recommends five books to learn more about the man and his work—including the novel of which Tolstoy said he ‘didn’t know a better book in all our literature’.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

Lectures on Dostoevsky by Joseph Frank

Memoirs from the House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Jessie Coulson

Dostoevsky: Reminiscences by Anna Dostoevsky

The Master of Petersburg: A Novel by J M Coetzee

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

1 Lectures on Dostoevsky by Joseph Frank

2 memoirs from the house of the dead by fyodor dostoevsky, translated by jessie coulson, 3 dostoevsky: reminiscences by anna dostoevsky, 4 the master of petersburg: a novel by j m coetzee, 5 crime and punishment by fyodor dostoevsky.

Y ou are the author of a new biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1861) . It’s a book that intertwines the narrative of his life with his own words, taken from where his fiction has been drawn from lived experience, which is such a great way to do a literary biography. Having devoted all this time to his life and work, can you outline for our readers Dostoevsky’s significance as a writer?

He’s also  sometimes criticised, I think fairly, as being verbose or digressive. Because he was always broke, and he was paid by the page, most of his best known novels are understandably quite long. Those are some of the reasons why people feel intimidated by him as a writer. They don’t quite know their way in.

But what I think is really interesting about Dostoevsky, and speaks to modern readers, is that he’s concerned not with the aristocracy but with the vulnerable people of society, whether that’s serfs, people forced into prostitution, or the disabled, or the poor. So he’s looking at society in a completely different way to many of his peers.

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And, aside from being a magnetic writer, he has a huge amount to say about the human condition: what makes us good, whether it makes sense to believe in God… there are all these universal questions across his writing that I think speak to a modern audience. His are really interesting precursors to the modern novel.

So part of my idea was to try to rehabilitate him in the popular imagination, as a writer who’s had a really incredible life, but also has a lot to say in the here and now. He’s not just a historical relic.

Absolutely. Crime and Punishment is arguably Dostoevsky’s most famous book. Do you think it’s the best place to start, for someone coming fresh to his writing?

Not necessarily. He’s actually written some great short stories and novella-length work. So you could read something quite short, like Notes from the Underground , which is probably only 60 pages. It’s a super-intense, sometimes very funny, deeply absurd and weird little book. It packs so many ideas into a short space.

He’s also got a wonderful story from early in his career called The Double . It’s farcical, almost in the style of Nikolai Gogol, whom he admired a lot. It’s not long and great fun to read. So it depends what you’re most attracted to.

Well, the first of the books you’ve selected is Lectures on Dostoevsky , by Joseph Frank. Why do you recommend it?

‘Lectures’ makes it sound more academic than it is, in a way. Joseph Frank was probably the leading scholar on Dostoevsky working in any language. He wrote an incredible five-volume biography of Dostoevsky , probably 2500-pages long. It took about 25 years to finish. He worked at Princeton and later Stanford, and he created this undergraduate lecture series, to bring people up to speed in a short space of time. These lectures were published for the first time at the end of 2019.

They’re a really good way to start learning about Dostoevsky, because he gives you just enough to really understand where he was coming from at these different moments in his life. It doesn’t cover all his books, but the important ones – with the notable exception of Devils – including his first and last work. So you could read this pretty short book and get a good sense of the man and the world he was born into. And you’re getting it from one of the world’s leading experts.

As a starting point, I think Lectures on Dostoevsky is more accessible than that vast biography might be.

I agree. But the mere existence of a five-volume biography gestures towards Dostoevsky’s remarkably eventful life. Could you give us a potted summary?

Yes. Let me give you the three-minute version.

Dostoevsky was born in a hospital for the poor. His father was a doctor, and had just about managed to climb onto the lowest rung of the hereditary nobility, basically through hard work, firstly as an army surgeon. So Fyodor grew up on the grounds of this hospital, looking out of the window at all these sick people in dressing gowns.

It wasn’t a particularly lovely childhood, but they did manage to buy this very rundown estate outside of Moscow. He loved going there in the summer with his mother. Unfortunately, while he was still pretty young, his mother died of consumption and the estate burned down in an accidental fire. Later his father died – either from alcoholism or because he was murdered by his peasants, who hated him.

“He became a literary sensation, literally overnight”

Dostoevsky ends up in an engineering academy in St Petersburg, but he really wanted to be a novelist. He just about finished his degree, but anyone who knows anything about him would be terrified to walk on a bridge made by Dostoevsky, put it that way. It would be a structural nightmare.

He quickly decided he would rather be poor, as long as he could be a writer. He wrote his first book, Poor Folk , and gave it to a friend of a friend who worked for a magazine one day in spring – during those lovely white nights that you get in St Petersburg, where it barely gets dark. He gave it to the guy, went out and had some drinks, came home at 4am. And the critic burst into the room, telling him he’s a literary genius and that he’s already shared a copy with the most important critic in all of Russia . Six hours later, the other critic agreed. Suddenly he was a literary sensation. Literally overnight.

Oh wow. The dream.

Well, he fell out with those friends quite quickly, and ended up in a second literary circle, which was more dangerous and plotting revolution… basically he fell in with the wrong crowd. He was caught, sentenced to death, subjected to a mock execution and sent off for years of hard labour in Siberia. So he was out there in the freezing cold, pounding alabaster and breaking up barges for several years.

Released as an army private, he fell in love with someone else’s wife, Maria. That guy also died of alcoholism, so he married her – but they had a deeply unhappy marriage. He managed to get back to St Petersburg, where he wrote these amazing memoirs of his time in prison, which became a total sensation and rehabilitated his literary reputation.

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From there he was well-known and well-respected as a writer, pretty much until the end of his life.  But his personal life was still very choppy. He had an affair with a young student called Polina, and ran away to Europe with her–but she was just stringing him along. He became a gambling addict, lost all his money and his beloved brother died. He was completely penniless, so he wrote a novel called The Gambler to pay off his debts; in doing that, he’d given himself such a tight deadline that he hired a stenographer so that he could actually write it in the month he had – and got on really well with her. They went on to have four children, although two of them died.

In the 1870s, he developed emphysema and his health worsened, but at least he was happy in love for that last decade of his life. So, yes. Pretty eventful. Writers are generally known for being sat at their desks writing for most of the time. I think he bucks the trend.

You chose to call your book Dostoevsky in Love . Can you tell us a little about that decision?

Yes. There were two types of love that I wanted to talk about.

Recent biographies have been very keen to talk about him as an intellectual, and I think most people – at least in terms of the general readership – don’t know much about his personal life. It’s a shame, because he had such a fascinating life and it makes a great story.

There’s another kind of love, maybe a gentler definition, which is about how he thought we could try to create a world that we all want to live in; that is, Christian love, compassion. He believed strongly that the world isn’t about good and bad people. It’s about the struggle in each person to act well or badly. We all have the capacity to do either. He really wanted to foster the instinct for love in his readers. I think that’s one of the best ways to read him consistently across his work.

As you mentioned, he has a very varied output, but it’s this worldview that brings it together?

The next book you want to recommend is Memoirs from the House of the Dead , by Dostoevsky himself. You’ve specified the translation by Jessie Coulson.

During his lifetime, it was thought to be one of the most important books he’d written. Tolstoy didn’t have a huge amount of praise for his rivals, but when he read House of the Dead he said he “didn’t know a better book in all our literature.”

People think of Dostoevsky as writing these almost melodramatic plots with a large cast, what’s been described as ‘fantastic realism.’ It’s an intensified version of reality. Whereas House of the Dead is journalism, really, but it couldn’t be called that at the time so it’s framed as a novel. It’s part of a genre called Zapiski, which means ‘notes’ or ‘scribbles’. It’s nominally about a third person, but it’s obviously heavily influenced by his experience in prison. I don’t think you could have later writers like Solzhenitsyn without this book.

“He’d win arguments by pulling up his trouser leg, showing the scars from his shackles”

It’s also not very well known to English readers, and it’s a good way of understanding what Dostoevsky went through, how he became the writer that his contemporaries saw him as. He would go to literary salons and people revered him because of what he had been through; he’d win arguments by pulling up his trouser leg, showing the scars from his shackles… it was a big part of who he was, and his literary persona.

It’s also just a great book. There are incredible scenes – my favourite is a bathhouse scene, in a traditional Russian steam room. They’re all slapping themselves with birch twigs, about 80 prisoners crammed in a five by five metre cube. Grime is washing off them onto the people crouching below. He describes the sludge on the floor as being an inch thick, they’re slipping around in it and their chains are getting caught up in each other’s. And as they slap themselves with the birch twigs, you see all the scars from their various lashings and other corporal punishments getting redder and redder. That scene will stay with you forever.

That autofictional element, the crossover between Dostoevsky’s fiction and the events of his life, forms the basis of your book. Could you talk more about these commonalities?

Even his first biographers noted that there were very close relations between his life and some of the subjective passages scattered through his fiction. Other academics have noted that he made use of his life experience, mobilising it as a way of showing his authenticity. A good example is when he talks about what it’s like for the condemned man in the last minute of his life: anyone reading that passage for the first time would have known that it was something he spoke about from experience, that mock execution.

Well sure. And given how eventful a life it was, it would be a waste if he didn’t make the most of it in his writing. But let’s talk about book three, Dostoevsky: Reminiscences , by Anna Dostoevsky, his second wife. The book’s translated by Beatrice Stillman.

Anna was vital in securing his legacy after he died. And it was Anna who was the love of his life. She’s written these Reminiscences of her time with him, and there are so many lovely insights into their relationship and the kind of person he was.

She was a stenographer so she wrote in shorthand, which meant she was writing a lot of these notes in real time, with Dostoevsky in the same room. You know: ‘He’s just annoyed me by spending all this money at the roulette table.’ He didn’t know what she was writing, so she was extraordinarily candid—more than you might expect, even from a diary format.

So we have real insight into what it was like to live with the guy, and it’s fascinating because novelists tend to have high ideals, and most of us find it hard to live up to our own ideals. It would be a sad thing if our ideals weren’t higher than our practice, but it does give you a sense of what it was like to live with a man who I think anyone would accept could be difficult company.

“The world isn’t about good and bad people. It’s about the struggle in each person to act well or badly.”

But their love for each other is genuinely really touching. The way he proposed was quite beautiful, he basically told her he was planning a new book, but he didn’t know if it was realistic, and he asked for her opinion. ‘There’s this sick old man, who’s kind of talented but never really found his moment. And he meets this young girl.’ And Anna said: ‘oh, is she handsome?’ and he said, ‘Well, not particularly, but she has a good soul and a good heart.’ The charmer.

He goes on: ‘is it reasonable to expect that such a lovely young woman could love an old, sick, poor man with no prospects?’ and she says, ‘well, if he has a good heart, that’s the main thing. I mean, does anyone love anyone for their riches?’ You’re thinking, bless you. Yes.

Anyway, eventually he says it. ‘What if that old man were me, and that young woman were you, and I asked for your hand. What would you say?’ She said: ‘I will love you for the rest of my life.’ That’s how they got married.

Terribly romantic. And what about the book that brought them together? The Gambler.  Did it pay off his debts?

It paid off that particular debt. The contract was with a thoroughly evil publisher called Stellovsky. Dostoevsky borrowed 3,000 rubles from the man, on the condition that he write a new novel for him in 12 months, otherwise he’d forfeit all his copyrights for the next nine years. Dostoevsky spent the next eleven months writing Crime and Punishment instead, then in the 11th month, he tried to ask for a deadline extension and Stellovsky said, ‘no, no. This is all just a tactic, I want your copyrights.’

Absolutely. Apparently Kazuo Ishiguro wrote The Remains of the Day in four intense weeks. It boggles the mind. Anyway, we’ll come to Crime and Punishment in just a minute, but first let’s talk about The Master of Petersburg , by J. M. Coetzee.

This is one of the books that inspired me to write mine. In The Master of Petersburg, Coetzee basically creates a fictional version of Dostoevsky who goes to St Petersburg from his exile in Europe with Anna, because his stepson has died in mysterious circumstances. In real life, Dostoevsky did have a stepson who he didn’t get on particularly well with. They had a rocky relationship.

So Coetzee’s created a sort of counterfactual, partly inspired – sadly – by his own son falling from an 11th-floor balcony. That plays into the emotional truth of this amazing novel, which also vividly evokes the atmosphere of the time – all these little alleyways and small courtyards where people are hanging out their laundry, the sights and sounds and smells of St Petersburg of the time. It’s a brilliant, atmospheric way of bringing this period to life.

I think it’s very true to the atmosphere of Dostoevsky’s life, and the way he thought about St Petersburg. Admittedly it’s brave to veer completely off script and create a new version – it’s not a historical novel, it’s very much a fictional novel. And that kind of gave me permission to conceive of a book about Dostoevsky as something more creative than the trainlines set out in a conventional biography.

Do you think a reader can gain understanding of Dostoevsky as a real person from a work of fiction like this?

I think that brings us to Crime and Punishment . As you’ve already mentioned, Dostoevsky was writing this book at a time in his life when he was under a great deal of financial and emotional stress. It’s become a great classic, but I suspect more people have it on their bookshelf than have read it. So: is it worth it? Why should people read Crime and Punishment?

It’s definitely worth it. It’s hard to choose only five books. The temptation is just to put down Dostoevsky’s five long novels and say, look, here’s your reading list, off you go. Some people will be upset that I haven’t included The Brothers Karamazov , which in some ways is the culmination of his work.

I think Crime and Punishment is probably his most conventional novel. It’s effectively a sort of literary crime novel, and is in some ways quite typical of its time. It’s got a fascinating structure, where a full 80% of the novel comes after he’s committed the crime but before he reaches the punishment. So for the majority of the novel, you are in suspense and, despite the title, a part of you genuinely believes he might get away with it. It’s a real literary feat, I think, to bring you onside with a guy whose avowed mission is to kill an old woman with an axe. If you think about what his contemporaries were doing, I think it’s an incredible novel – in terms of the precedents that are set and the boundaries of what the novel can be and how risky it can be. It also explores a lot of the themes that preoccupy him in a really fine resolution.

One thing I wanted to mention: I recommend this specific translation by Oliver Ready, because his new translation gives us the clearest possible sense of how vivid the language can be. There has been a whole, long, troubled translation history of Dostoevsky, and huge arguments over whether you should be literal or true to the spirit. I think if you haven’t picked up a Dostoevsky book and enjoyed it, Oliver Ready’s translation is where you should go to get a sense of what he can do as a writer. Ready’s equal to the task of translating Dostoevsky. It’s an incredible edition.

Great tip, thank you. And – just as a sidebar – do you have a particular translation of The Brothers Karamazov that you favour?

This is just my personal taste, but I really like Constance Garnett’s . She’s quite true to Dostoevsky’s Victorian style. She’s not perfect, though. The other major translation was by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky . Debate rages over which of these is better. In general terms, I’d say Garnett is a bit more graceful at the expense of sometimes smoothing over rough patches, and the Pevear-Volokhonsky is maybe truer to the original. But some people find that literal-ness to get in the way of the reading experience. I personally prefer Garnett.

Finally, could you tell us what Dostoevsky has come to mean to you?

What’s been fascinating about immersing myself in his writing for the last few years has been watching someone tackle some of the biggest questions we face as a species. You know: what it means to be good, the existence of God, how to create a functioning society. And a number of questions we still wrestle with, like free speech . Watching him get closer and closer to his perfect argument, or his best articulation and never quite feeling that he’s reached it. But there’s this incredibly satisfying feeling of him spiralling around the truth, getting ever closer.

I don’t think it’s possible to pinpoint the one perfect sentence that will solve everything. But I do think that endeavour is worthwhile, and something we could all aspire towards.

February 8, 2021

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Alex Christofi

Alex Christofi is Editorial Director at Transworld and the author of the novels Let Us Be True and Glass , winner of the Betty Trask Prize for fiction. He has written for numerous publications including The Guardian , The London Magazine, New Humanist, The White Review and the Brixton Review of Books , and contributed an essay to the anthology What Doesn't Kill You: Fifteen Stories of Survival . Dostoevsky in Love is his first work of non-fiction.

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Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Biography of the Greatest Russian Novelist, Written by His Daughter, Aimée Dostoevsky Paperback – Import, 7 September 2021

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The biography of Russia's greatest novelist by his daughter, Aimée Dostoevsky. Includes chapters on the origins of the Dostoevsky family, the childhood of Fyodor Dostoevsky, adolescence, the Petrachevsky conspiracy, prison life, Dostoevsky as soldier, Dostoevsky's marriages, his travels, Dostoevsky as a father, his relations with Turgenev and Tolstoy, Dostoevsky as Slavophile and Dostoevsky's last days.

The story of the great novelist told by his daughter. "She gives a familiar and intimate account of his daily life, character, and habits. She is naturally her father's partisan in all quarrels that he had. But there are facts and points of view in this book that can be found in no other work. To those who have read Dostoevsky's novels these new and intimate revelations will be of keen interest, but even if one has never read any of the novels, this biography is written in such a manner as to hold the attention of the reader from beginning to end." - William Lyon Phelps

Publisher's note for the printed edition : in order to be more enjoyable during reading, this book is in 6" x 9" format. In the same spirit, the paper is cream-colored, which causes less fatigue to the eyes than white paper. All our publications are carefully crafted, both in terms of typography as well as design.

Publisher's note for the Kindle edition : our Kindle publications are carefully crafted, with Table of Contents, Index, Footnotes and References when applicable. A strong emphasis has been put on the typography as well as the design.

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• Print length 222 pages
• Language English
• Publication date 7 September 2021
• Dimensions 15.24 x 1.4 x 22.86 cm
• ISBN-10 1788945700
• ISBN-13 978-1788945707
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Discovery Publisher (7 September 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 222 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1788945700
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1788945707
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 276 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 1.4 x 22.86 cm
• Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ India
• #5,262 in Philosophy (Books)
• #7,377 in Indian History (Books)
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Biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian Novelist

Author of 'Crime and Punishment'

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Fyodor Dostoevsky (November 11, 1821 – February 9, 1881) was a Russian novelist. His works of prose deal heavily with philosophical, religious, and psychological themes and are influenced by the complicated social and political milieu of nineteenth-century Russia.

Fast Facts: Fyodor Dostoevsky

• Full Name:  Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
• Known For:  Russian essayist and novelist
• Born:  November 11, 1821 in Moscow, Russia
• Parents:  Dr. Mikhail Andreevich and Maria (née Nechayeva) Dostoevsky
• Died: February 9, 1881 in St. Petersburg, Russia
• Education:  Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute
• Selected Works:   Notes from Underground  (1864), Crime and Punishment  (1866), The Idiot  (1868–1869), Demons  (1871–1872), The Brothers Karamazov  (1879–1880)
• Spouses:  Maria Dmitriyevna Isaeva (m. 1857–1864), Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina (m. 1867⁠–⁠1881)
• Children:  Sonya Fyodorovna Dostoevsky (1868–1868), Lyubov Fyodorovna Dostoevsky (1869–1926), Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky (1871–1922), Alexey Fyodorovich Dostoevsky (1875–1878)
• Notable Quote:  “Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.”

Dostoevsky descended from minor Russian nobility, but by the time he was born, several generations down the line, his direct family did not bear any titles of nobility. He was the second son of Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky and Maria Dostoevsky (formerly Nechayeva). On Mikhail’s side, the family profession was the clergy, but Mikhail instead ran away, broke ties with his family, and enrolled in medical school in Moscow , where he became first a military doctor and, eventually, a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. In 1828, he was promoted to collegiate assessor, which gave him status equal to certain nobles.

Along with his older brother (named Mikhail after their father), Fyodor Dostoevsky had six younger siblings, five of whom lived to adulthood. Although the family was able to acquire a summer estate away from the city, most of Dostoevsky’s childhood was spent in Moscow at the physician’s residence on the grounds of Mariinsky Hospital, which meant that he observed the sick and impoverished from a very young age. From a similarly young age, he was introduced to literature, beginning with fables , fairy tales , and the Bible, and soon branching out into other genres and authors.

As a boy, Dostoevsky was curious and emotional, but not in the best physical health. He was sent first to a French boarding school, then to one in Moscow, where he felt largely out of place among his more aristocratic classmates. Much like the experiences and encounters of his childhood, his life at boarding school later found its way into his writings.

Academia, Engineering, and Military Service

When Dostoevsky was 15, he and his brother Mikhail were both forced to leave their academic studies behind and begin pursuing military careers at St. Petersburg’s Nikolayev Military Engineering School, which was free to attend. Eventually, Mikhail was rejected for ill health, but Dostoevsky was admitted, albeit rather unwillingly. He had little interest in math, science, engineering, or the military as a whole, and his philosophical, stubborn personality didn’t fit in with his peers (although he did earn their respect, if not their friendship).

In the late 1830s, Dostoevsky suffered several setbacks. In the fall of 1837, his mother died of tuberculosis . Two years later, his father died. The official cause of death was determined to be a stroke, but a neighbor and one of the younger Dostoevsky brothers spread a rumor that the family’s serfs had murdered him. Later reports suggested that young Fyodor Dostoevsky suffered an epileptic seizure around this time, but the sources for this story were later proved unreliable.

After his father’s death, Dostoevsky passed his first set of exams and became an engineer cadet, which allowed him to move out of academy housing and into a living situation with friends. He often visited Mikhail, who had settled in Reval, and attended cultural events such as the ballet and the opera. In 1843, he secured a job as a lieutenant engineer, but he was already distracted by literary pursuits. He began his career by publishing translations; his first, a translation of Honoré de Balzac's novel Eugénie Grandet , was published in the summer of 1843. Although he published several translations around this time, none of them were particularly successful, and he found himself struggling financially.

Early Career and Exile (1844-1854)

• Poor Folk  (1846)
• The Double  (1846)
• "Mr. Prokharchin" (1846)
• The Landlady  (1847)
• "Novel in Nine Letters" (1847)
• "Another Man's Wife and a Husband under the Bed" (1848)
• "A Weak Heart" (1848)
• "Polzunkov" (1848)
• "An Honest Thief" (1848)
• "A Christmas Tree and a Wedding" (1848)
• "White Nights" (1848)
• "A Little Hero" (1849)

Dostoevsky hoped that his first novel, Poor Folk , would be enough of a commercial success to help pull him out of his financial difficulties, at least for the time being. The novel was completed in 1845, and his friend and roommate Dmitry Grigorovitch was able to help him get the manuscript in front of the right people in the literary community. It was published in January 1846 and became an immediate success, both critically and commercially. In order to focus more on his writing, he resigned his military position. In 1846, his next novel, The Double , was published.

As he immersed himself further in the literary world, Dostoevsky began embracing the ideals of socialism . This period of philosophical inquiry coincided with a downturn in his literary and financial fortunes: The Double was poorly received, and his subsequent short stories were as well, and he began suffering from seizures and other health problems. He joined a series of socialist groups , which provided him with assistance as well as friendship, including the Petrashevsky Circle (so named for its founder Mikhail Petrashevsky), who frequently met to discuss social reforms such as the abolition of serfdom and freedom of press and speech from censorship.

In 1849, however, the circle was denounced to Ivan Liprandi, a government official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and accused of reading and circulating banned works that criticized the government. Fearing a revolution, the government of Tsar Nicholas I deemed these critics to be very dangerous criminals. They were sentenced to be executed and were only reprieved at the last possible moment when a letter from the tsar arrived just before the execution, commuting their sentences to exile and hard labor followed by conscription . Dostoyevsky was exiled to Siberia for his sentence, during which time he suffered several health complications but earned the respect of many of his fellow prisoners. 

Return From Exile (1854-1865)

• Uncle's Dream  (1859)
• The Village of Stepanchikovo (1859)
• Humiliated and Insulted (1861)
• The House of the Dead (1862)
• "A Nasty Story" (1862)
• Winter Notes on Summer Impressions  (1863)
• Notes from Underground (1864)
• "The Crocodile" (1865)

Dostoevsky completed his prison sentence in February 1854, and he published a novel based on his experiences, The House of the Dead , in 1861. In 1854, he moved to Semipalatinsk to serve out the rest of his sentence, forced military service in the Siberian Army Corps of the Seventh Line Battalion. While there, he began working as a tutor to the children of the nearby upper-class families.

It was in these circles that Dostoevsky first met Alexander Ivanovich Isaev and Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva. He soon fell in love with Maria, although she was married. Alexander had to take a new military posting in 1855, where he was killed, so Maria moved herself and her son in with Dostoevsky. After he sent a letter of formal apology in 1856, Dostoevsky had his rights to marry and to publish again restored; he and Maria married in 1857. Their marriage was not particularly happy, due to their differences in personality and his ongoing health problems. Those same health problems also led to him being released from his military obligations in 1859, after which he was allowed to return from exile and, eventually, move back to St. Petersburg.

He published a handful of short stories around 1860, including “A Little Hero,” which was the only work he produced while in prison. In 1862 and 1863, Dostoevsky took a handful of trips out of Russia and throughout western Europe. He wrote an essay, “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions,” inspired by these travels and critiquing a wide range of what he viewed as social ills, from capitalism to organized Christianity and more.

While in Paris, he met and fell in love with Polina Suslova and gambled away much of his fortune, which put him in a more severe situation come 1864, when his wife and brother both died, leaving him as the sole supporter of his stepson and his brother’s surviving family. Compounding matters, Epoch , the magazine he and his brother had founded, failed.

Successful Writing and Personal Turmoil (1866-1873)

• Crime and Punishment (1866)
• The Gambler  (1867)
• The Idiot (1869)
• The Eternal Husband  (1870)
• Demons  (1872)

Fortunately, the next period of Dostoevsky’s life was to be considerably more successful. In the first two months of 1866, the first installments of what would become Crime and Punishment , his most famous work, were published. The work proved incredibly popular, and by the end of the year, he had also finished the short novel The Gambler .

To complete The Gambler on time, Dostoevsky engaged the help of a secretary, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, who was 25 years younger than him. The following year, they were married. Despite the significant income from Crime and Punishment , Anna was forced to sell her personal valuables to cover her husband’s debts. Their first child, daughter Sonya, was born in March 1868 and died only three months later.

Dostoevsky completed his next work, The Idiot , in 1869, and their second daughter, Lyubov, was born later that same year. By 1871, however, their family was in a dire financial situation yet again. In 1873, they founded their own publishing company, which published and sold Dostoevsky’s latest work, Demons . Fortunately, the book and the business were both successful. They had two more children: Fyodor, born in 1871, and Alexey, born in 1875. Dostoevsky wanted to start a new periodical, A Writer's Diary , but he was unable to afford the costs. Instead, the Diary was published in another publication, The Citizen , and Dostoevsky was paid an annual salary for contributing the essays.

Declining Health (1874-1880)

• The Adolescent (1875)
• "A Gentle Creature" (1876)
• "The Peasant Marey" (1876)
• "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (1877)
• The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
• A Writer's Diary  (1873–1881)

In March 1874, Dostoevsky decided to leave his work at The Citizen ; the stress of the work and the constant surveillance, court cases, and interference by the government proved too much for him and his precarious health to handle. His doctors suggested he leave Russia for a time to try to shore up his health, and he spent some months away before returning to St. Petersburg in July 1874. He eventually finished an ongoing work, The Adolescent , in 1875.

Dostoevsky continued working on his A Writer’s Diary , which included a range of essays and short stories surrounding some of his favorite themes and concerns. The compilation became his most successful publication ever, and he began receiving more letters and visitors than ever before. It was so popular, in fact, that (in a major reversal from his earlier life), he was summoned to the court of Tsar Alexander II to present him with a copy of the book and to receive the tsar’s request to help educate his sons.

Although his career was more successful than ever, his health suffered, with four seizures in the span of a single month in early 1877. He also lost his young son, Alexei, to a seizure in 1878. Between 1879 and 1880, Dostoevsky received a slew of honors and honorary appointments, including the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Slavic Benevolent Society, and the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale. When he was elected vice president of the Slavic Benevolent Society in 1880, he gave a speech that was praised widely but also criticized harshly, leading to further stress on his health.

Literary Themes and Styles

Dostoevsky was heavily influenced by his political, philosophical, and religious beliefs, which were in turn influenced by the situation in Russia during his time. His political beliefs were intrinsically tied to his Christian faith, which placed him in an unusual position: he decried socialism and liberalism as atheist and degrading to society as a whole, but also disapproved of more traditional arrangements like feudalism and oligarchy . Still, he was a pacifist and despised ideas of violent revolution. His faith and his belief that morality was the key to improving society are threaded through most of his writings.

In terms of writing style, Dostoevsky’s hallmark was his use of polyphony—that is, the weaving together of multiple narratives and narrative voices within a single work. Rather than have an overarching voice of the author who has all the information and steers the reader towards the “right” knowledge, his novels tend to simply present characters and viewpoints and let them develop more naturally. There is no one “truth” within these novels, which ties in closely with the philosophical bend to much of his work.

Dostoevsky’s works often explore human nature and all the psychological quirks of humankind. In some regards, there are Gothic underpinnings to these explorations, as seen in his fascination with dreams, irrational emotions, and the concept of moral and literal darkness, as seen in everything from The Brothers Karamazov to Crime and Punishment and more. His version of realism, psychological realism , was concerned particularly with the reality of the inner lives of humans, even more so than the realism of society at large.

On January 26, 1881, Dostoevsky suffered two pulmonary hemorrhages in quick succession. When Anna called for a doctor, the prognosis was very grim, and Dostoevsky suffered a third hemorrhage soon after. He summoned his children to see him before his death and insisted on the Parable of the Prodigal Son being read to them—a parable about sin, repentance, and forgiveness. Dostoevsky died on February 9, 1881.

Dostoevsky was buried in the Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Convent in St. Petersburg, in the same cemetery as his favorite poets, Nikolay Karamzin and Vasily Zhukovsky. The exact number of mourners at his funeral is unclear, as different sources have reported numbers as varied as 40,000 to 100,000. His gravestone is inscribed with a quote from the Gospel of John: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it dies, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

Dostoevsky’s particular brand of human-focused, spiritual, and psychological writing has played a part in inspiring a wide range of modern cultural movements, including surrealism, existentialism, and even the Beat Generation, and he is considered a major forerunner of Russian existentialism, expressionism, and psychoanalysis.

In general, Dostoevsky is considered one of the great authors of Russian literature . Like most writers, he was ultimately received with great praise alongside severe criticism; Vladimir Nabokov was particularly critical of Dostoevsky and of the praise with which he was received. On the opposite side of things, however, luminaries including Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ernest Hemingway all spoke of him and his writing in glowing terms. To this day, he remains one of the most widely-read and studied authors, and his works have been translated across the globe.

• Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881 . Princeton University Press, 2003.
• Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821–1849 . Princeton University Press, 1979.
• Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time . Princeton University Press, 2009.
• Kjetsaa, Geir. Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writer's Life . Fawcett Columbine, 1989.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky

Great Russian writer

"To love someone means to see them as God intended them"

Date and place of birth:  October 30, 1821, Moscow Date and place of death:  January 28, 1881, St. Petersburg Occupation: novelist, translator, philosopher Movement: realism Genre: novel, novella, short story, poem Years of oeuvre: 1844-1880

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is a classic of Russian and world literature, according to UNESCO, one of the most readable writers in the world. His most famous books, five books “Crime and Punishment” (1866), “The Idiot” (1868), “The Possessed” (1872), “Teenager” (1875), “The Brothers Karamazov” (1880).

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in 1821 in the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Tula Province. His father, Mikhail Andreevich, was a doctor at that hospital, and his mother, Maria Fyodorovna, came from a merchant family. The family lived in more than cramped conditions, the father of the family was a real tyrant, and Dostoevsky’s mother passed away early.

In 1837 Fyodor Dostoevsky and his brother Mikhail moved to St. Petersburg, where after a brief training in a boarding school he entered the Military Engineering School. Dostoevsky called the years of study “hard labor”, he had no interest in military affairs, and devoted most of his time to literature – he read books by Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac, Hugo, adored the German playwright Schiller, Pushkin and Gogol. After graduating from college in 1843 Fyodor Dostoevsky was enrolled in the St. Petersburg engineering command, but after six months in the rank of lieutenant retired.

Dostoevsky, the novice writer

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky wrote his first book, Poor People, in 1846. His friend, the writer Dmitry Grigorovich, persuaded him to show the manuscript to Nekrasov, who was publishing the literary magazine Sovremennik at the time. After reading it with the words “A new Gogol has appeared!” Nekrasov took the text to Belinsky, who came to indescribable delight. Dostoevsky would later describe his memories of the meeting with the critic in his book The Writer’s Diary. The success of Poor People was tumultuous, but short-lived. The second story “The Double” (1846) was received coldly, which struck at the ego of Dostoevsky, who already imagined himself a great writer.

Crime and punishment for unwanted views

Beginning in 1847, Dostoevsky began attending radical meetings at the Butashevich-Petrashevsky house, where they often criticized the government. For which he was later arrested and sentenced to eight years of hard labor in Siberia. He described his impressions in Notes from the Dead House (1862), where he also wrote Stepanchikovo Village (1859). In Siberia Fyodor Dostoevsky got married, but the marriage was short-lived. In 1855, Nicholas I died, and his son Alexander II, who granted amnesty to many prisoners, ascended the throne. Among them was Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Birth of a classic of world literature

After his amnesty, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky returned to St. Petersburg, where he and his brother began to publish the literary and political magazine Vremya. It was here that “Notes from the Underground” and “The Humiliated and Insulted” were first published. The magazine existed for a couple of years and was closed by order of the censors, and then the Dostoevsky brothers began publishing the magazine Znamya, but it was subsequently closed due to lack of subscribers.

From 1862 to 1863 he had a relationship with the writer Apollinaria Suslova, with whom the writer traveled to England, Germany and France. But his lady of the heart preferred another, which dealt Dostoevsky a blow. Part of the result was a pernicious passion for card games and roulette, which later brought Dostoevsky a lot of trouble and debt. Later, Fyodor Dostoevsky married Marina Dmitrievna Isaeva, with whom he lived for seven years. In 1864, he lost his wife and his beloved brother Mikhail, taking it upon himself to take care of his family. This meant writing a lot and fast.

The fantastic in creation

In the works of F.M. Dostoevsky there are often enough fantastic motifs, above all, the mystical component in the works.

Dostoevsky twice gave the subtitle “fantastic story” to his works. In The Gentleman, the fantastic device consists in the fact that the narrative is a stream of consciousness of the main character. Nowadays the fantastic nature of this technique is no longer felt, but it was on the example of The Gentleman that Dostoevsky once discussed the characteristics of his method as “realism in the highest sense,” “realism that reaches the fantastic.”

Another “fantastic story,” The Funny Man’s Dream, describes a fragile alien utopia and its destruction under the corrupting influence of an earthling who has gone there.

On the basis of a fantastic assumption – the sudden appearance of the protagonist of his complete double, who gradually takes his place in life – the story “The Double” is built. In “The Mistress” the then fashionable ideas of mesmerism and animal magnetism are used to motivate the plot.

Also fantastical in nature is the story “Bobok,” devoted to the negotiations of the dead in the cemetery. Also, a fantastic assumption underlies one of the author’s most famous humorous stories, “Crocodile” (a commoner swallowed by a crocodile feels very good about himself).

Semi-fantastical, mystical motifs are also found in Dostoevsky’s serious works, such as the novels The Brothers Karamazov (in particular, the chapters “The Grand Inquisitor,” “The Devil. Ivan Fedorovich’s Nightmare”) and The Possessed. Dostoevsky also uses science-fiction imagery, for example, describing Raskolnikov’s dream of intelligent microbes enslaving humanity, an artificial satellite of the Earth in Ivan Karamazov’s conversation with the devil. On the whole, most researchers recognize the presence of a fantastic element in Dostoevsky’s works, both as the basis of the plot and as a means of describing the places of action (“Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg” is sometimes recognized as a kind of fantastic city, a “ghost town” which does not repeat the real historical St. Petersburg in every detail).

Dostoevsky’s “Great Five Books”

From the mid-1860s Dostoevsky began to write the books that made up his main contribution to world literature, the famous five-book Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868), The Possessed (1872), The Teenager (1875), The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky wrote his main books in a great hurry, sometimes not even having time to reread dictated to stenographers, in order to meet the deadline for the magazines, where chapters of his works were published. “Very often it happened in my literary life that the beginning of a chapter of a novel or novella was already in the printer and in the set, and the ending was still sitting in my head, but must necessarily have been written by tomorrow,” – admitted Dostoevsky.

The Gambler” (1867), for example, was written in just 26 days, simultaneously with the work on Crime and Punishment.

In 1866 Fyodor Dostoevsky married his stenographer Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. It was a happy marriage, his wife helped him in his work on manuscripts, made his work schedule, comforted him after card losses and guarded his peace from intrusive visitors. Without Anna Grigorievna Dostoevsky’s biography could have turned out quite differently: with her help the family was able to improve their financial situation and pay their debts. In the marriage were born four children.

The published novel “The Possessed” was a huge success, after its publication Dostoevsky was offered to publish in the conservative magazine Grazhdanin. Here Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich began to publish The Writer’s Diary.

Before his death, Dostoevsky was working on the second volume of the novel The Brothers Karamazov, which brought him his greatest fame. But the real sensation was his speech about Pushkin at the unveiling of the poet’s monument in Moscow in 1880. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky died on January 28, 1881.