Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was the Russian novelist of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. Sentenced to death for political activity and reprieved at the last moment, he spent four years in a Siberian prison camp. His novels explore guilt, freedom, suffering and faith with a psychological depth that shaped the modern novel.
Works
Crime and Punishment
Early success
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821, the son of a doctor at a hospital for the poor. After his mother's death he was sent to the Military Engineering Academy in St Petersburg, but cared only for literature, and translated Balzac's Eugénie Grandet into Russian.
His first novel, Poor Folk, published in 1846, was hailed by the critic Vissarion Belinsky as the work of a new Gogol. His next stories disappointed, and he joined a circle of young intellectuals who discussed socialist ideas and read banned books.
Siberia
In April 1849 the members of the circle were arrested. Dostoevsky was sentenced to death. On 22 December, on Semyonovsky Square, the prisoners were tied to posts in front of a firing squad when a messenger announced that the tsar had commuted their sentences.
He spent four years in the prison camp at Omsk, in chains among convicts, followed by years as a private soldier in Siberia. There he began to suffer from epilepsy. He described his imprisonment in Notes from the House of the Dead.
The great novels
Back in St Petersburg in 1859, he founded magazines with his brother, lost his first wife and his brother in 1864, and fell deeply into debt, partly through gambling. To meet his deadlines he dictated his novels to a young stenographer, Anna Grigorievna, whom he married in 1867.
Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) followed. In 1880 his speech on Pushkin in Moscow was received with wild enthusiasm. He died in St Petersburg in February 1881; tens of thousands of people followed his coffin.
Anecdotes
A novel in twenty-six days
In 1866 Dostoevsky had signed a contract obliging him to deliver a new novel by 1 November, or lose the rights to all his works for nine years. He hired a stenographer, Anna Snitkina, and dictated The Gambler to her in twenty-six days. They married a few months later.
The mock execution
The staged execution of December 1849 haunted Dostoevsky for the rest of his life. In The Idiot, Prince Myshkin describes in detail the thoughts of a man who believes he has only five minutes to live, drawing directly on the author's own experience.
Frequently asked questions
What are Dostoevsky's most famous novels?
Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), as well as Notes from Underground and The Gambler.
Why was Dostoevsky sent to Siberia?
For belonging to a circle of young intellectuals that discussed banned ideas. Sentenced to death in 1849, he had his sentence commuted at the last moment to four years of hard labour.
Which translation of Dostoevsky is quoted on Guesseo?
The translation by Constance Garnett, whose versions of Russian classics introduced them to generations of English readers.