Fyodor Dostoevsky

(1821 - 1881)

At the age of twenty-five, Fyodor Dostoevsky published his first novel, Poor Folk, in 1846 to wide acclaim. Three years later he was arrested for associating with liberals, subjected to a mock execution, and sent to Siberia for four years of hard labor. During a five-year period in the 1860s, Dostoevsky wrote Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, and The Idiot. In 1876 he became the editor of the Diary, a one-man monthly magazine, which mixed journalism, fiction, and commentary. Dostoevsky died at the age of fifty-nine in 1881.