Sämtliche Werke 11 : Autobiographische Schriften

After returning from Siberia in 1859, the writer threw himself into the bustling world of Petersburg’s press. Together with his brother he launched the political‑literary monthlies Die Zeit and later Die Epoche, experiments that were as financially disastrous as they were intellectually stimulating. His early articles reveal a mind wrestling with Slavophilism, Hegelian state theory, and the western ideas of Alexander Herzen, all filtered through lively debates with naturalist‑philosopher Strachoff and other literary friends.

These cramped years left him deep in debt but also stoked the imagination that would soon produce Raskolnikow and The Gambler. While the journals faltered, he managed only a handful of short pieces—a satirical tale, a city novella, and a travel sketch—before turning fully to fiction. The tension between his struggling journalist’s schedule and the urgent need to write would shape the powerful, socially aware novels that followed, marking the start of his remarkable literary ascent.