How many days did Dostoevsky take to complete The Gambler?

Fyodor Dostoevsky completed The Gambler in 26 days.

The novel was written in 1866 under intense financial pressure. Dostoevsky had signed a contract with the publisher Stellovsky that required him to deliver a new work by a strict deadline. If he failed, the publisher could obtain rights to his existing and future works for many years.

To meet the deadline, Dostoevsky employed the stenographer Anna Snitkina, who took dictation and helped transcribe the manuscript. They completed the novel in 26 days. Snitkina later became Dostoevsky’s second wife, Anna Dostoevskaya.

The Gambler draws on Dostoevsky’s own experience with roulette and follows Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor caught in an unstable household and a destructive gambling culture. The setting, fictional town Roulettenburg, reflects the European resort world associated with roulette tables. The speed of composition is remarkable, but the novel’s themes—obsession, chance, humiliation, and compulsive hope—were connected to experiences Dostoevsky knew personally.