Dostoevsky

Mr. David Magarshack's biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky is based on a mass of material that has become available only recently with the publication of the fourth and final volume of his letters and the latest research into the origins of some of the ideas that are closely associated with Dostoevsky's writings. Mr. Magarshack's new biography is valuable for giving a careful and unbiased account of Dostoevsky's private life without over-stepping the bounds rational analysis of the latest available data or indulging in the kind of incantatory hero-worship that has become all too common a feature of some recent studies of Dostoevsky.