Fyodor Dostoevsky

Lore & Background

Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821, the second child of Dr Mikhail Dostoevsky and Maria Dostoevskaya. He was raised in the family home in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, where he encountered patients at the lower end of the Russian social scale. Introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales, legends, and books by Russian and foreign authors, he was greatly influenced by Nikolai Gogol. His mother died in 1837, and around the same time he left school to enter the Nikolayevsky Engineering Academy. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s, he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into Saint Petersburg's literary circles. He was arrested in 1849 for belonging to the Petrashevsky Circle, a literary group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia. Sentenced to death, the sentence was commuted at the last moment. He spent four years in a Siberian hard labour camp, which inspired him to write The House of the Dead (1860–1862), followed by about five years of compulsory military service in exile (1854–1859).

Reader's Guide

Dostoevsky's body of work consists of thirteen novels, three novellas, seventeen short stories, and numerous other works. His writings were widely read both within and beyond his native Russia, influencing an equally great number of later writers, including Russians such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov, the philosophers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, and the emergence of existentialism and Freudianism. Friedrich Nietzsche called him 'the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn' in Twilight of the Idols. His books have been translated into over 170 languages. After his exile, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary. He traveled around Western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship; for a time he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), The Adolescent (1875), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

Did You Know?

• Dostoevsky was sentenced to death in 1849 for belonging to the Petrashevsky Circle, but the sentence was commuted at the last moment.
• He spent four years in a Siberian hard labour camp, which inspired his work The House of the Dead.
• Friedrich Nietzsche called Dostoevsky 'the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn' in Twilight of the Idols.
• His books have been translated into over 170 languages.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt." — Fyodor Dostoevsky "As quoted in Kierkegaard, the Melancholy Dane (1950) by Harold Victor Martin." — Fyodor Dostoevsky "The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half." — Fyodor Dostoevsky "Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia." — Fyodor Dostoevsky