Painted portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky with a full reddish-brown beard and a brown coat, against a slate blue ground

Portraits · Novelists · IV of X

Fyodor Dostoevsky

1821–1881 · Novelist

I have vowed to myself that… in no circumstances will I work to order. … I want each of my efforts to be incontrovertibly good.

I have vowed to myself that... in no circumstances will I work to order. Work done to order would oppress and blight me. I want each of my efforts to be incontrovertibly good.

Fyodor Dostoevsky · letter to his brother Michael, 1845
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Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote this in March 1845 to his elder brother Michael. He was twenty-three and had not yet published a novel of his own; Poor Folk would appear the next year. In the same letter he points to Pushkin and Gogol: both wrote very little, yet both deserved national memorials.

Letter to his brother Michael (Mayne no. VI), 24 March 1845. Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends, tr. Ethel Colburn Mayne (London: Chatto & Windus, 1914), p. 20.

The originals

Oil portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky, seated, his hands clasped over his knee
The likenessPAINTED BY VASILY PEROV · 1872Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (painted from life; painter died 1882; Commons: PD-Art, PD-old-100-expired; Google Art Project scan).
The title page of Poor Folk, 1847, with a handwritten inscription across the top
Poor Folk, 1847His first novel, printed as a book in 1847 after its debut in 1846, inscribed to Prince Vladimir Odoevsky "as a sign of deepest respect, from the author".Poor Folk (St Petersburg, 1847), title page with a presentation inscription. Russian State Library, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.