Poor Folk
Dostoevsky began working on "Poor Folk" in early 1844. He first mentioned the upcoming work in a letter to Mikhail on 30 September 1844: "I am finishing up a novel of the size of "Eugénie Grandet". It's a rather original work." Dostoevsky later wrote to his brother on 23 March 1845, "I finished the novel in November, then rewrote it in December, and again in February–March. I am seriously satisfied with my novel. It is a serious and elegant work ..." Sometime around April 1845, his friend Dmitry Grigorovich, with whom he had shared an apartment since the autumn of 1844, proposed giving the manuscript to poet Nikolay Nekrasov, who was planning to issue an anthology in 1846. Dostoevsky took the manuscript to Nekrasov and returned home. Shortly afterwards the doorbell of his house rang, and he opened the door to the excited Nekrasov and Grigorovich, both of whom congratulated him on his debut novel, of which they had only read 10 pages. They finished the full 112-page work during the night at Dostoevsky's apartment. The next morning, the three men went to the critic Vissarion Belinsky; Nekrasov proclaimed Dostoevsky "the New Gogol" though Belinsky replied sceptically "You find Gogols springing up like mushrooms". Dostoevsky himself did not believe his book would receive a positive review from Belinsky, but when Nekrasov visited Belinsky in the evening, the latter wanted to meet Dostoevsky to congratulate him on his debut. Dostoevsky proposed to issue "Poor Folk" in the "Fatherland Notes", but it was instead published in the almanac "St. Petersburg Collection" on January 15, 1846.