Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865

by Joseph Frank

Overview

Volume three of one of the greatest literary biographies of our time

Joseph Frank’s award-winning, five-volume Dostoevsky is widely recognized as the best biography of the Russian novelist in any language and one of the greatest literary biographies ever written. In this monumental work, Frank blends biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism to illuminate Dostoevsky’s works and set them in their personal, historical, and ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.

This volume begins with the writer’s return to Saint Petersburg after a ten-year Siberian exile and traces how his engagement in the cultural and social ferment of Russia in the early 1860s led to his discovery of the themes that would underlie his mature masterpieces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400844234
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/31/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Joseph Frank (1918–2013) was professor emeritus of Slavic and comparative literature at Stanford and Princeton. The five volumes of his Dostoevsky biography won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, two James Russell Lowell Prizes, and two Christian Gauss Awards, and have been translated into numerous languages.

Editorial Reviews

This is the third in a projected five-volume literary biography of Dostoevsky. The first two volumes ( LJ 9/1/76; 11/15/83) have been widely acclaimed; the present volume, which covers Dostoevsky's return to Petersburg and the resumption of his literary activities following his exile in Siberia, is no less an achievement. It is to Frank's credit that he has analyzed so carefully these formative years, usually neglected by scholars, and produced this gracefully written volume of intellectual history. It is a work of vast erudition and of absorbing interest that can hardly be recommended too highly. Essential for all major collections. Joyce S. Toomre, Russian Research Ctr., Harvard Univ.

Library Journal

...a narrative of such compelling precision, fairness and insight as to give the reader a sense not just of acquaintanceship, but of complete identification with Dostoevsky, of looking through his eyes and understanding just his mind.
— Boston Globe

Helen Muchnic

Just as Frank's magnificent third volume... unravels an immensefully important and complex period in Dostoevksy's life and, along the way, evokes and explicates the Russia of the mid nineteenth century... Frank's effort as a biographer of Dostoevsky has been a unique and successful experiment in the bipographical form.
— Philadelphia Inquirer

Robin Feuer Miller

The first and last thing to say about Joseph Frank's ongoing enterprise... is that it is unrivaled in both its ambition and achievement. This is simply the most reliable, detailed, balanced and up to date account we have of the most influential novelist of the last 150 years. It is also the most fascinating... the present volume tells the story of transformation. There is hardly a more dramatic one to be found anywhere.
— The Boston Globe

Donald Fanger

"A narrative of such compelling precision, thoroughness and insight as to give the reader a sense not just of acquaintanceship, but of complete identification with Dostoevsky, of looking through his eyes and understanding with his mind."—-Helen Muchnic, Boston Globe

"This is unquestionably the best account we have of Dostoevsky in his time."—-Donald Fanger, New Republic

"Will rightly be considered one of the finest achievements of American literary scholarship."—-René Wellek, Washington Post

From the Publisher

This is unquestionably the best account we have of Dostoevsky in his time.

The New Republic - Donald Fanger

. . . a narrative of such compelling precision, thoroughness and insight as to give the reader a sense not just of acquaintanceship, but of complete identification with Dostoevsky, of looking through his eyes and understanding with his mind.

Boston Globe - Helen Muchnic

. . . will rightly be considered one of the finest achievements of American literary scholarship.

Washington Post - Rene Wellek

. . . will rightly be considered one of the finest achievements of American literary scholarship.
— René Wellek

Washington Post

This is unquestionably the best account we have of Dostoevsky in his time.
— Donald Fanger

The New Republic

. . . a narrative of such compelling precision, thoroughness and insight as to give the reader a sense not just of acquaintanceship, but of complete identification with Dostoevsky, of looking through his eyes and understanding with his mind.
— Helen Muchnic

Boston Globe