Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevskij (1821-1881)

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821 in Hospital for the poor, the second of seven children. He lived much of his childhood distanced from his frail mother and officious father, forming a close bond with his elder brother Mikhail, with whom spent many hours reading Pushkin.
When they were teenagers both Fyodor and Mikhail were enrolled in separate boarding schools, Fyodor matriculating at an engineering school in St. Petersburg. It is possible that being confronted with the rigorous schedule of the engineering school (that served as a recruiting pool for the Russian bureaucracy) helped assure Dostoevsky that his destiny was the written word. His first novel Poor Folk was published in 1846 and it received a warm critical response.
In 1849 he was arrested and convicted for alleged political crimes. Sentenced to death, but due to a last-minute reprieve, was instead sentenced to an indefinite term in Siberia, including four years hard labour. His prison experiences would provide a vivid backdrop for much of his later work. Released from his imprisonment and service by 1858, he began a fourteen-year period of furious writing, in which he published many significant texts. Among these are: The House of the Dead (1862), Notes From The Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868), and Devils (1871).
During this period, Dostoevsky's life was in upheaval, as he lost both his first wife and his brother. On February 15, 1867, he married his stenographer Anna Grigorevna Snitkina who would manage his affairs until his death in 1881. Two months before he died, Dostoevsky completed the epilogue to The Brothers Karamazov (1880), which was published in serial form in the Russian Messenger. His funeral attracted thousands of citizens, as Russia mourned the death of a significant literary hero.