What was Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first published novel?

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first published novel was Poor Folk.

Poor Folk, also translated as Poor People, was published in 1846. It is an epistolary novel, meaning its story unfolds through letters exchanged between the impoverished clerk Makar Devushkin and the young woman Varvara Dobroselova. Their correspondence explores poverty, dignity, social inequality, and emotional dependence.

The novel attracted immediate attention in literary Petersburg. Vissarion Belinsky, an influential critic, praised the young Dostoevsky, and the book established him as a promising new writer. Its focus on vulnerable urban characters reflected the tradition of socially conscious Russian literature developing at the time.

Poor Folk is sometimes confused with Dostoevsky’s later works because several of them also center on suffering and marginalization. Unlike The Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment, however, it is a relatively short debut built around letters rather than a large multi-generational plot. Its publication began Dostoevsky’s long literary career, though his later novels became much more philosophically and structurally complex.