Poor Folk
Dostoyevsky started his writing career after finishing university. He started translating literature from Frenchwhich he learnt at the boarding schoolinto Russian, and then wrote short stories. With the success of his first novel, "Poor Folk", he became known throughout Saint Petersburg and Russia. Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Herzen and others praised "Poor Folk"s depiction of poverty, and Belinsky called it Russia's "first social novel". This success did not continue with his second novel, "The Double", and other short stories published mainly in left-wing magazines. These magazines included "Notes of the Fatherland" and "The Contemporary".