Our Notes & References

“The most original of Dostoevsky’s great novels” (Frank) – here in fantastic condition, with its original wrappers. There was only one book edition during Dostoevsky’s lifetime, and this is an early posthumous edition (see details below).

Fedor Dostoevsky (1821-81) worked on “the most personal of all [his] major works, the book in which he embodies his most intimate, cherished, and sacred convictions” (Frank), from September 1867 to January 1869. This period proved to be “one of the most difficult and even tragic times in his life” (Chuviliaev, our translation): he and his wife Anna Grigorievna (1846-1918) were in Europe escaping from creditors in Russia, while Dostoevsky was also unsuccessfully trying to overcome his gambling addiction. In 1868, their first child, Sonia, died just two months after her birth. Because of his obligations to the magazine Russkii vestnik [The Russian Messenger], Dostoevsky could not afford to take a long break. After just a fortnight’s pause, he resumed work and continued writing the novel without interruption.

The novel was published in Russkii vestnik in separate issues from January 1868 to March 1869. Simultaneously, Dostoevsky attempted to have it published as a separate edition, but without success: The Idiot was received by critics and even Dostoevsky’s friends with bewilderment and disappointment. The book edition was not published until six years later, in 1874, when Anna Dostoevskaia organised her own publishing business. Dostoevsky edited the original version for this separate publication, which is considered in some bibliographies as the book’s second edition (see Cheshikhin-Vetrinskii). The novel was never published again during Dostoevsky’s lifetime.

It came out as a separate edition in 1882 (indicated as the third edition on title) and in this 1884 edition. The title mentions here “fifth edition”, yet we could not find any trace of a “fourth” edition. It is likely that the publishers assigned the “fourth” edition to the publication of the novel in volume 7 (1882) of Dostoevsky’s first complete works (1882-83), and therefore the present edition from 1884 can be considered the actual third book edition.

At the turn of the century, the novel was ‘rediscovered’ and became one of the world’s literary classics: “The Idiot violates every critical norm and yet somehow manages to achieve real greatness” (Morson).

Bibliography

Cheshikhin-Vetrinskii V. E. F. M. Dostoevskii v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov i ego pismakh: Khronologicheskaia kanva, pisma, bibliografiia. Chast 2. Dumnov, Moskva, 1923.

Chuviliaev, Ivan. “Fedor Dostoevskii. Idiot”. Polka academy.

Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time. Princeton University Press, 2010, p.577.

Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865–1871. Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 340

Morson, Gary Saul.”‘The Idiot’ savant”. The New Criterion. 36 (10), June 2018.