Our Notes & References

“We have never had almanacs like the Petersburg Miscellany. [In it] is printed the novel Poor Folk by Mr. Dostoevskii – a name new and completely unknown, but one destined, it seems, to play a significant role in our literature.” (Belinskii, our description here and below)

This is the second of two influential almanacs published by poet, critic, and editor Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-78), appearing one year after The Physiology of Saint Petersburg. These collections showcased the new realistic current that would come to dominate 19^th-century Russian literature.

The most significant of the contributions to Nekrasov’s weighty 560-page Peterburg Miscellany is the short novel Poor Folk by the young Fedor Dostoevski (1821-81)i. This is the first original work of Dostoevskii to appear in print; he had only published previously a translation of Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet in 1844.

The Miscellany also includes a programmatic essay by the leading critic Vissarion Belinskii, an early article by the radical critic Aleksandr Herzen (writing as “Iskander” shortly before his final departure from Russia), two of Turgenev’s earliest stories, and the first mature verses of Nekrasov himself. Other contributors include Ivan Panaev, Vladimir Odoevskii, Vladimir Sollogub, Andrei Kroneberg, Aleksandr Nikitenko, and Apollon Maikov.

Turgenev’s verse tale “The Landowner” is illustrated with wood engravings by Bernadskii after Aleksandr Agin (“the best Russian illustrator of the time” (Kuzminskii)). There are also illustrations by various hands to Panaev’s “Parisian Amusements.”

The appearance of Poor Folk represents one of the most celebrated cases of overnight success in literary history. Dostoevskii recalled decades later in his Writer’s Diary how Nekrasov and the writer Dmitrii Grigorovich were enraptured by his manuscript and rushed to show it to Belinskii. The nation’s most influential critic declared to Dostoevskii: “To you as an artist the truth has been revealed and proclaimed, bequeathed as a gift. So cherish your gift, remain faithful, and you will be a great writer!”

At the same time, the reception of Poor Folk and of the Miscellany as a whole was not uniform. The critic Faddei Bulgarin led the conservative assault, deprecating Nekrasov as a member of some new, “natural literary school” (cited in Tikhomirov) who had abandoned his high artistic calling in favour of an obsession with vulgar reality. Belinskii responded by embracing the label “Natural School,” which would come to designate the initial stage of the great era of literary realism in Russia. The critic had originally set on Gogol, with his story “The Overcoat,” as the standard-bearer for this new school; but Dostoevskii’s short novel about a lonely Petersburg copy-clerk proved to be ideologically more congenial – even if its literary significance goes far beyond its status as Russia’s first “social novel,” as Belinskii put it. Dostoevskii not only builds on the type of the “little man” introduced by Gogol; he blazes a path for the psychological realism of his own later works, as well as the depth of characterisation that is a hallmark of the 19^th-century Russian tradition as a whole.

A very good copy, with provenance and in pleasant contemporary binding, of this scarce volume: we couldn’t trace any other example at auction outside Russiain the past 40 years.

Provenance

Paul M. Fekula (1905-82; Fekula was the son of a Russian Orthodox archpriest who immigrated to Edmonton, Alberta from the former Austrian province of Galicia (now in Ukraine). He spent most of his career in New York working in corporate finance; but his life’s achievement was the creation of the largest private collection of Slavic books and old manuscripts in North America. A particular interest was material from the Russian ancien régime – holdings of estates, monasteries and imperial institutions that were confiscated by the Soviets and sold for foreign currency by the Antiquarian Section of the Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga export agency (cf. Kasinec, viii); sold, Christie’s, 30 Nov. 2006, lot 69); Robert Eden Martin (b. 1940; American lawyer and noted collector of Russian, British and American literature works; his sale, Christie’s, 28 Nov. 2018).

Bibliography

Fekula, 4985 (this copy); Kilgour, 826; Smirnov-Sokolskii, Russkie literaturnye almanakhi i sborniki XVIII-XIX vv., 563; Belinskii, V. “Peterburgskii sbornik, izdannyi N. Nekrasovym,” Otechestvennye zapiski, vol. 44, no. 2 (1846), pp. 45-46; Dostoevskii, F. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh. Vol. 25. Leningrad: Nauka, 1983: Kasinec, E. Introduction to The Millennium Collection of Old Ukrainian Books at the University of Toronto Library: A Catalogue, ed. E. Kasinec and Bohdan Struminskyj. Toronto: University of Toronto, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, 1984. pp. v-ix; Kuzminskii, K. Khudozhnik-illiustrator A. A. Agin, ego zhizn i tvorchestvo. Moscow: Nauka, 1913; Tikhomirov, V. “Peterburgskii sbornik, izdannyi N. V. Nekrasovym (1846), v kontekste russkoi kritiki i zhurnalistiki 1840-kh godov.” Vestnik Kostromskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, vol. 20, no. 1 (2014): 149-154.