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Feodor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoyevski was born in
October, 1821, in a hospital for the poor, in Moscow, where
his father was physician. There was a large family of
children, and small means. Feodor and his brother
Aleksei, to whom he was bound through life by an
intimate friendship and common literary interests, were
sent to the military school for engineers in St.
Petersburg, and left it as sub-lieutenants. But, after the
lapse of a year (1844), Feodor asked for his discharge
from the military service, to devote himself to literature.
He was even then suffering from the disease which was
aggravated when he was subsequently whipped in
Siberia; he had epileptic fits, and moreover he was
visionary. With regard to the subjects which he treated later,
and his ability to express the psychology of crime, this
saying of his to a friend is characteristic: “The
dejection which succeeds my epileptic attacks has this
characteristic, — I feel like a great criminal; it comes over
me like an unknown fault; a criminally guilty deed
weighs upon my conscience.”
At the age of twenty-four he wrote his novel “Poor
Folk.” Towards the close of his life, in the “Diary of
an Author” he related the circumstances of his first
appearance as an author. When he had written his novel,
and did not know how he should get his manuscript
disposed of, he got one of his friends, the subsequently
well-known author Grigoróvitch, to take it to the poet
Niekrásof. About three o’clock in the morning,
Dostoyevski heard some one knock at his door. It was
Grigoróvitch, who had come back with Niekrásof, who
had already read the novel, and was so struck by it that
he felt an impulse immediately to press the author to
his heart. When early the next morning he left
Dostoyevski, he went with the manuscript straight to
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