Author. Born in Moscow, as the second son of a doctor, he was educated at home and at a private school. Shortly after the death of his mother in 1837, he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he entered the Army Engineering College, graduating as a military engineer. With the help of a small income from the estate, he resigned in 1844 his commission to devote himself to writing. His first novel, “Poor Folk” in 1846 gained a great success with the critics. In 1846 Dostoevsky joined a group of utopian socialists. He was arrested on April 23, 1849 during a reading of Vissarion Belinsky's radical letter "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" and sentenced to death. He was imprisonment in Siberia where he spent four years in hard labor. These experiences provided subject matter for his future works. During the years in Siberia, Dostoevsky became a monarchist and a devout follower of the Russian Orthodox Church. Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg in 1859 as a writer with a religious mission. He published three works that derive in different ways from his Siberia experiences: "The House of the Dead" from 1861 to 1862, "The Insulted and Injured" in 1861, and "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" in 1863. In 1857 Dostoevsky married Maria Isaev, a 29-year-old widow. Two years later he resigned from the army. In 1862 Dostoevsky went to abroad for the first time, traveling in France and England. He traveled Europe again in 1863 and 1865. During this period, his wife and brother died, and he became obsessed with gambling. "Crime and Punishment" was serialized in the publication, “Ruskii vestnik” (The Russian Messenger) from January through December of 1866 and appeared in a book form in 1867. In 1867 he married Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, his 22-years old stenographer, who seems to have understood her husband's manias and rages. He left Russia with her to avoid creditors and spent time in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. In Russia his literary fame only grew. When "The Possessed" became successful, he returned to Russia, and purchased a house in the provincial town of Staraya Russa. From 1873 to 1874 Dostoevsky was editor of the conservative weekly newspaper, "Citizen". In 1876 he founded his own monthly publication, "The Writer's Diary". From its writings, he collected "The Diary of a Writer" in 1876. By the time of "The Brothers of Karamazov" from 1879 to 1880, Dostoevsky was recognized in his own country as one of its great writers. An epileptic all his life, Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg on February 9, 1881. His wife devoted the rest of her life to cherish the literary heritage of her husband. In 1923 French author André Gide, who was the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient, published Fyodor Dostoevsky’s biography.