Poor Folk

Complete and unabridged, with 32 full-page plates by Vladimir Makovsky, Pavel Fedotov and Sylvester Shchedrin. An ageing clerk and a young woman across the courtyard write to each other about rent, boots, tea and the impossibility of saying what they mean. Dostoevsky was twenty-four; Nekrasov and Grigorovich read the manuscript overnight, woke the author at four in the morning, and Nekrasov carrie...