Lesser Known Facts About Dostoevsky

With the book group commencing this weekend, with Crime and Punishment, I thought I would share some lesser known (but still very reliable) facts* about our man, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

#1: Crime and Punishment was originally intended to be two separate books; the first, Crime, and the second, Punishment. They were sort of intended like a double album, in the vain of Use Your Illusion 1 and Use Your Illusion 2 by Guns n' Roses. The publisher however, saw things differently, and insisted on a single volume.

Fyodor was disheartened, and not feeling able to choose between his two babies, tore the back cover off Crime, and the front cover off Punishment, and sticky-taped the two together. This is why the book is difficult to read, and why people are often inclined to give up half way through. It is simply because Crime was always a better yarn than Punishment.

#2: Fyodor had a slight speech impediment that meant that his TH's sounded like F's. So for example, if he was to say "Thanks for reading my book", it would come out as "Fanks for reading my book".

Anyhow, the name he was given at birth was actually Theodore, but he found this very difficult to pronounce. For the sake of making things easier for himself, when he became a published author, he altered his name by Depol, to Fyodor. Strange but true.

#3: This third one is more rumour than fact, although the evidence as you will soon see, is pretty overwhelming. In a time where it was very difficult for female authors to get their work published, often, a female writer would write under a male pseudonym-- a well known case of this being George Eliot; real name Mary Ann Evans. So anyhow, as rumour has it, Theodore was really Theresa. The fake beard and disguise was pretty convincing, as you can see here:


But if you look closely at this, the one surviving photograph of him/her without the beard, well, you make your own mind up, valued reader:


*as made known to me in a dream