Dostoevskii and His Readers, 1866-1910

Over the thirty years that separated his debut novel Poor Folk (Bednye liudi, 1846) from his last masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov (Brat’ia Karamazovy, 1879-1880), Dostoevskii repeatedly had the chance to reflect on the role of the reader. While at the beginning of his career he tended to distrust the public (who “has an instinct, but lacks education”), in the 1860s his orientation toward the reader became a fundamental element of his creative method. This does not mean that Dostoevskii wro...