Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1821–81

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, novelist, was born in Moscow on 30 October 1821, the son of a surgeon. Leaving the Engineers for literature, he published Poor Folk (1846) joining revolutionary circles in St Petersburg, he was condemned to death (1849), reprieved at the last moment, and sent to hard labour in Siberia. In 1854 he was enrolled in a Siberian corps. His sufferings are recorded in House of the Dead. In 1859 he returned to St Petersburg. His masterpiece, Crime and Punishment (1866), is one of the most powerful realistic works of fiction. Other important books are The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Domestic trials, financial troubles and ill-health clouded his later life, spent abroad, and from 1871 in St Petersburg as a Slavophil journalist. He died on 28 January 1881.