Chronology of works and historical context

Poor Folk (1846), Novel

Poor Folk is Dostoevsky’s first novel, written after leaving military service (Komroff). It was almost immediately recognized and praised, though the novels and short stories that followed afterwards garnered varying degrees of success (Ready).

Netochka Nezvanova (1849), unfinished Novel

Netochka Nezvanova remains unfinished by Dostoevksy. He began writing and publishing it serially, but progress was cut off (Komroff) when he was arrested in 1849 for participating with a socialist group, the ‘Petrashevsky circle’ (Ready). Dostoevsky was sentenced to death, but at the last moment was saved, and sentenced to prison in Siberia instead. He was kept in prison for four years, then served in the military until he was allowed to return to Russia in 1859 (Ready). He never returned to the novel after his release.

The Insulted and Injured (or Humiliated and Insulted) (1861), Novel

The Insulted and Injured became Dostoevsky’s first full-length novel, along with The House of the Dead (Komroff). Both were written amidst great gambling debts, general poverty, and ever-present epileptic attacks (Komroff).

The House of the Dead (1860-62), Novel

This novel is what truly reestablished Dostoevsky as an active member of the St. Petersburg literary scene after all his trials in Siberia (Ready). The work is very closely tied to and reflective of his stay there, painting a bold picture of the Russian prison system and making it available to the public for the first time.

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1963), Essay Collection

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions was written after Dostoevsky visited Europe. He travelled there a few times, to see specialists for his epilepsy or to escape gambling debts, but he always believed that the Western ideas found there were seducing and corrupting the Russian way of thinking. The collection of essays was first published in Time (Vremya), a periodical he began with his brother Mikhail in 1861 (Ready).

Notes from the Underground (1864), Novel

Dostoevsky lost both his wife, who had been long suffering from illness, and his brother Mikhail the year Notes from the Underground was published (Ready). The novel was in close response to Chernyshevsky’s novel, What is To Be Done?'

The Gambler (1867), Novel

The Gambler is the novel most directly affected by Dostoevsky’s own gambling debts, which had built up over the years because of a roulette addiction (Ready). Dostoevsky promised a publisher a manuscript but was wrestling with the idea (which was later published as The Idiot) and was running out of time. However, he met a young stenographer and within three weeks had dictated to her the entirety of The Gambler (Kormoff). The novel saved him and allowed him to continue to explore the ideas of The Idiot to their full extent.

The Idiot (1869), Novel

Dostoevsky ended up marrying the young stenographer, Anna, who ended up being instrumental in his ability to continue writing through the end of his life, and therefore produce his most important works, by resolving gambling debts and other financial issues (Kormoff). Many reflections of Dostoevsky’s own life experience come through in The Idiot; most notably, this idea of the man spared from execution only seconds before he is to die, which seemed to haunt him for the rest of his life (Burry), and his epilepsy, which the main character Myshkin also suffers from.

The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Final Novel

While working on The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky suffered the loss of his young son from an extended epileptic fit (Ready). This grief had a great impact on the novel, which was the last that Dostoevsky completed. He died in 1881, one year after its publication.