II.

Early Writings

Dostoyevsky's first novel, Poor Folk (1846), the unhappy love story of a humble government clerk, was highly praised for its sympathetic treatment of poor people victimized by cruel circumstances. The book was innovative in that it added a psychological dimension to the narrative, looking at the hero's conflicts from within, and this found a sympathetic response with readers. In his next novel, The Double (1846), and in 13 other sketches and stories composed in the following three years, Dostoyevsky continued to explore the humiliations and consequent behaviour of the underprivileged.

In 1849 Dostoyevsky's literary career was disastrously interrupted. He had joined a group of young intellectuals who read and debated French socialist theories forbidden to be openly discussed in tsarist Russia. A police informer slipped into their secret meetings, and the entire group was imprisoned. In December 1849, they were taken to a place of execution, presumably to be shot; at the last minute they were reprieved, and the punishment was changed to penal exile. Dostoyevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labour in Siberia and to serve afterwards as a common soldier. The stresses of this period brought on epilepsy, from which Dostoyevsky suffered the rest of his life.