19th Century

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on 11 November 1821 (30 October, Old Style) and died in Saint Petersburg on 9 February 1881 (28 January, Old Style). He made his literary debut with Poor Folk (1846). In 1849 he was arrested for his involvement with the Petrashevsky Circle, subjected to a mock execution, and sentenced instead to hard labor in Omsk, Siberia (1850–1854), followed by military service. The experience of prison, described in The House of the Dead (1860–1862), and his return to Orthodox Christian faith deeply shaped his later work. ...

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, in Tula province, Russia, on 9 September 1828 (28 August, Old Style), and died at the Astapovo railway station on 20 November 1910 (7 November, Old Style). Born into the high nobility, he served in the army, was at Sevastopol during the Crimean War, and devoted himself to literature and to managing his estate. He published War and Peace (1865–1869) and Anna Karenina (1873–1877), two of the central works of the realist novel. ...