An open library of thought
Put ideas to the test of human lives.
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
These records present three major works and distinguish serialized versions from first book editions. Poor Folk, The Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent, A Writer’s Diary, the letters and the notebooks are not yet indexed, and titles vary between translations; this is a selection, not a complete bibliography.
011864
Published in 1864 in Epoch, the journal Dostoevsky ran with his brother, the work answers Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? and its image of a Crystal Palace. Dostoevsky complained that the censors had cut a passage that drew from all this the need for faith and Christ, so the printed text is partly truncated.
021866
Serialized in The Russian Messenger in 1866 and revised for the book edition of 1867, the novel responds to debates about utilitarian calculation, poverty and the radical “new people” celebrated by Chernyshevsky. Its much-discussed epilogue sketches a slow resurrection through love rather than a completed conversion.
031879–1880
Serialized in The Russian Messenger in 1879 and 1880, it was meant as the first part of a larger novel that Dostoevsky did not live to write. The famous sentence “if there is no God, everything is permitted” condenses an idea that Ivan and other characters formulate in several ways; it does not occur in that exact form.