Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist and journalist, author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, whose psychological and philosophical fiction influenced writers from Chekhov to Camus.

He was born in Moscow on 11 November 1821 (30 October in the Old Style calendar) and trained at a military engineering academy. His first novel, Poor Folk (1846), was praised by the critic Vissarion Belinsky. In 1849 he was arrested for his links to the Petrashevsky Circle; he was sentenced to death, reprieved at the last moment and sent to a Siberian labour camp for four years, an experience he drew on in The House of the Dead. He also suffered from epilepsy and a gambling addiction that kept him short of money for years.

His major novels came in the last two decades of his life: Notes from Underground (1864), often called one of the first existentialist works, Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868 to 1869), Demons (1871 to 1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879 to 1880). He died in Saint Petersburg on 9 February 1881. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages.

For collectors. Crime and Punishment first appeared in twelve monthly parts in The Russian Messenger through 1866 and was published in one volume in 1867. Frederick Whishaw's English translation appeared in 1885. Constance Garnett's influential translations were published by Heinemann in London, beginning with The Brothers Karamazov (1912), then The Idiot and The Possessed (both 1913) and Crime and Punishment (1914).