Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky[a] (UK: /ˌdɒstɔɪˈɛfski/,[1] US: /ˌdɒstəˈjɛfski, ˌdʌs-
/;[2] Russian: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский[b], tr. Fyódor Mikháylovich
Dostoyévskiy, IPA: [ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj] ( listen); 11 November 1821 – 9 February
1881[3][c]), sometimes transliterated as Dostoyevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer,
essayist and journalist. Dostoevsky's literary works explore the human condition in the troubled
political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of
philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed novels include Crime and
Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His
1864 novella, Notes from Underground, is considered to be one of the first works
of existentialist literature.[4] Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in
all of world literature, as many of his works are considered highly influential masterpieces.[5]
Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy
tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837
when he was 15, and around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military
Engineering Institute. 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. However, he was arrested in
1849 for belonging to a literary group, the Petrashevsky Circle, that discussed banned books
critical of Tsarist Russia. Dostoevsky was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at
the last moment. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of
compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist,
publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary, a collection of his
writings. He began to travel 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.
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 and influenced an equally great number of later writers including Russians such
as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov, philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul
Sartre, and the emergence of Existentialism and Freudianism.[6] His books have been translated
into more than 170 languages, and served as the inspiration for many films.
Ancestry[edit]
Parents
Maria Fyodorovna Dostoevskaya
Mikhail Andreyevich Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky's paternal ancestors were part of a noble family of Russian Orthodox Christians. The
family traced its roots back to Danilo Irtishch, who was granted lands in the Pinsk region (for
centuries part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, now in modern-day Belarus) in 1509 for his
services under a local prince, his progeny then taking the name "Dostoevsky" based on a village
there called Dostoïevo (derived from Old Polish dostojnik – dignitary).[7]
Dostoevsky's immediate ancestors on his mother's side were merchants; the male line on his
father's side were priests.[8][9]
In 1809, the 20-year-old Mikhail Dostoevsky enrolled in Moscow's Imperial Medical-Surgical
Academy. From there he was assigned to a Moscow hospital, where he served as military doctor,
and in 1818 he was appointed a senior physician. In 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva. The
following year, he took up a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. In 1828, when his two
sons, Mikhail and Fyodor, were eight and seven respectively, he was promoted to collegiate
assessor, a position which raised his legal status to that of the nobility and enabled him to acquire
a small estate in Darovoye, a town about 150 km (100 miles) from Moscow, where the family
usually spent the summers.[10] Dostoevsky's parents subsequently had six more children: Varvara
(1822–1892), Andrei (1825–1897), Lyubov (born and died 1829), Vera (1829–1896), Nikolai
(1831–1883) and Aleksandra (1835–1889).[11][8][9]
Childhood (1821–1836)[edit]
Fyodor Dostoevsky, born on 11 November [O.S. 30 October] 1821 in Moscow, was the second
child of Dr. Mikhail Dostoevsky and Maria Dostoevskaya (born Nechayeva). He was raised in the
family home in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, which was in a lower class
district on the edges of Moscow.[12] Dostoevsky encountered the patients, who were at the lower
end of the Russian social scale, when playing in the hospital gardens.[13]
Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age. From the age of three, he was read
heroic sagas, fairy tales and legends by his nanny, Alena Frolovna, an especially influential figure
in his upbringing and his love for fictional stories.[14] When he was four his mother used the Bible
to teach him to read and write. His parents introduced him to a wide range of literature, including
Russian writers Karamzin, Pushkin and Derzhavin; Gothic fiction such as the works from
writer Ann Radcliffe; romantic works by Schiller and Goethe; heroic tales by Miguel de
Cervantes and Walter Scott; and Homer's epics.[15][16] Dostoevsky was greatly influenced by the
work of Nikolai Gogol.[17] Although his father's approach to education has been described as strict
and harsh,[18] Dostoevsky himself reported that his imagination was brought alive by nightly
readings by his parents.[13]
Some of his childhood experiences found their way into his writings. When a nine-year-old girl
had been raped by a drunk, he was asked to fetch his father to attend to her. The incident
haunted him, and the theme of the desire of a mature man for a young girl appears in The
Devils, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and other writings.[19] An incident
involving a family servant, or serf, in the estate in Darovoye, is described in "The Peasant Marey":
when the young Dostoevsky imagines hearing a wolf in the forest, Marey, who is working nearby,
comforts him.[20]
Although Dostoevsky had a delicate physical constitution, his parents described him as hot-
headed, stubborn, and cheeky.[21] In 1833, Dostoevsky's father, who was profoundly religious,
sent him to a French boarding school and then to the Chermak boarding school. He was
described as a pale, introverted dreamer and an over-excitable romantic.[22] To pay the school
fees, his father borrowed money and extended his private medical practice. Dostoevsky felt out of
place among his aristocratic classmates at the Moscow school, and the experience was later
reflected in some of his works, notably The Adolescent.[23][16]
