Introduction & Overview of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment Introduction

When the first installment of Crime and Punishment appeared in the Journal Russian Messenger in January of 1866, its debt-ridden author, Fyodor Mikhallovich Dostoyevsky, had not yet finished writing the novel. However, even before the entire work had appeared in serial form, the novel was a public success. Early Russian readers and critics recognized that, artistically and socially, Crime and Punishment was one of the most important novels of its time, and it was widely discussed.

On the surface, Crime and Punishment is the story of a murder, set in the city of St. Petersburg, then the Russian capital. It is not, however, a murder mystery: we know the murderer's Identity from the very beginning. Moreover, although Dostoyevsky depicts the crime and the environment in which It takes place with great realism, he is more interested in the psychology of the murderer than in the external specifics of the...
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