DOSTOEVSKY All the writers of the '40's of the nineteenth century had their individual peculiarities.

But in this respect, Feodor Mikhailovitch Dostoevsky (1821-1880) was even more sharply separated from all the rest by his characteristics, which almost removed him from the ranks of the writers of the epoch, and gave him a special place in literature.
The chief cause of this distinction lies in the fact that while most of the other writers sprang from the country regions, being members of the landed gentry class, Dostoevsky represents the plebeian, toiling class of society, a nervously choleric son of the town; and in the second place, while the majority of them were well-to-do, Dostoevsky alone in the company belonged to the class of educated strugglers with poverty, which had recently made its reappearance.
His father was staff physician in the Marya Hospital in Moscow, and he was the second son in a family of seven children.

The whole family lived in two rooms, an ante-room and kitchen, which comprised the quarters allotted to the post by the government.

Here strictly religious and patriarchal customs reigned, mitigated by the high cultivation of the head of the family.
In 1837 Feodor Mikhailovitch and his elder brother were taken to St.
Petersburg by their father to be placed in the School for Engineers, but the elder did not succeed in entering, on account of feeble health.
Dostoevsky had already evinced an inclination for literature, and naturally he was not very diligent in his studies of the dry, applied sciences taught in the school.

But he found time to make acquaintance with the best works of Russian, English, French, and German classical authors.