![]() ![]() ![]() Selected from the two-volume set, this abridged edition of A Writer's Diary appears in a single paperback volume, along with a new condensed introduction by editor Gary Saul Morson. Far more popular than his novels ever were, the Diary was Dostoevskys favourite. A range of authorial and narrative voices and stances and an elaborate scheme of allusions and cross-references preserve and present Dostoevsky's conception of his work as a literary whole. Published in monthly instalments, it became a unique journalistic enterprise. In a single frame it incorporated an astonishing variety of material: short stories humorous sketches reports on sensational crimes historical predictions portraits of famous people autobiographical pieces and plans for stories, some of which were never written while others appeared later in the Diary itself. Still, as far as form was concerned, I failed utterly. ![]() The Diary's radical format was matched by the extreme range of its contents. Dostoevsky wrote in A Writers Diary that 'Most decidedly, I did not succeed with that novel however, its idea was rather lucid, and I have never expressed in my writings anything more serious. A Writer's Diary began as a column in a literary journal, but by 1876 Dostoevsky was able to bring it out as a complete monthly publication with himself as an editor, publisher, and sole contributor, suspending work on The Brothers Karamazov to do so. ![]() The essential entries from Dostoevsky's complete Diary, called his boldest experiment in literary form, are now available in this abridged edition it is a uniquely encyclopedic forum of fictional and nonfictional genres. ![]()
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