The Village of Stepanchikovo form of creative work novel
The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants: From the Notes of an Unknown (Russian: Село Степанчиково и его обитатели. Из записок неизвестного, Selo Stepanchikovo i ego obitateli. Iz zapisok neizvestnogo), also known as The Friend of the Family, is a novel written by Fyodor Dostoevsky and first published in 1859.Characters
Foma Fomich Opiskin: fifty years old
Sergey Alexandrovich - Seryozha: the narrator, nephew of the colonel, twenty-two years old
Yegor Ilyich Rostanev: the colonel, forty years old, retired
Ilyusha: Rostanev's son, eight years old
Sasha or Sashenka: Rostanev's daughter, fifteen years old
Nastasya Yevgrafovna - Nastenka: the children's governess
Yevgraf Larionych Yezhevikin: a serf, Nastenka's father
Krakhotkin the General's lady: Rostanev's mother
Miss Perepelitsyna: confidante of the General's lady
Praskovya Ilyinichna: Rostanev's sister
Stepan Alekseyich Bakhcheyev: Rostanev's friend
Ivan Ivanych Mizinchikov: Rostanev's distant cousin, twenty-eight years old
Pavel Semyonych Obnoskin: a guest of Rostanev's, twenty-five years old
Anfisa Petrovna: Obnoskin's mother, fifty years old
Tatyana Ivanovna: an old maid, thirty-five years old
Korovkin: Rostanev's friend
Gavrila Ignatych: a valet
Grigory Vidoplyasov: a valet
Falaley: a house-boy, sixteen years oldBackground
Foma Opiskin was based on Nikolai Gogol in his last years. Foma's speeches are parodies of Gogol's Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, Opiskin's mannerisms, appearance and even personality are also based on Gogol.The story has the structure of a comedy; it was originally intended as a play.Dostoevsky wrote this novel for Mikhail Katkov, main editor of The Russian Messenger. In a letter to his brother Mikhail, Dostoevsky wrote: "The long story that I am writing for Katkov displeases me very much and goes against the grain. But I have already written a great deal, it's impossible to throw it away in order to begin another, and I have to pay back a debt."In a later letter he sounded more optimistic: "I am convinced that there are many weak and bad things in my novel; but I am convinced - I stake my life on it! - that there are very fine things. They sprang from the heart. There are scenes of high comedy that Gogol would have signed without hesitation."He submitted the novel to The Russian Messenger, but Katkov rejected it. Next he submitted it to The Contemporary, which accepted the novel, but at what Dostoevsky considered a humiliatingly low price. The editor of The Contemporary, Nekrasov, was very negative: "Dostoevsky is finished. He will no longer write anything important." The novel was ultimately published in Krayevsky's National Annals.
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