Crime and Punishment - Softcover

Dostoevsky offered his story or novella (at the time Dostoevsky was not thinking of a novel) to the publisher Mikhail Katkov. His monthly journal, The Russian Messenger, was a prestigious publication of its kind, and the outlet for both Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy, but Dostoevsky, having carried on quite bruising polemics with Katkov in early 1860s, had never published anything in its pages. Dostoevsky turned as a last resort to Katkov, and asked for an advance on a proposed contribution after all other appeals elsewhere failed. In a letter to Katkov written in September 1865, Dostoevsky explained to him that the work was to be about a young man who yields to "certain strange, 'unfinished' ideas, yes floating in the air"; he had thus embarked on his plan to explore the moral and psychological dangers of the "radical" ideology. In letters written in November 1865 an important conceptual change occurred: the "story" has become a "novel", and from here on all references to Crime and Punishment are to a novel.

Dostoevsky had to race against time, in order to finish on time both The Gambler and Crime and Punishment. Anna Snitkina, a stenographer who would soon become his second wife, was a great help for Dostoevsky during this difficult task. The first part of Crime and Punishment appeared in the January 1866 issue of The Russian Messenger, and the last one was published in December 1866." - Wikipedia