Fyodor Dostoevsky translated Honoré de Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet as his first published literary work.
Dostoevsky’s translation appeared in 1844, before the publication of his own novel Poor Folk. The project introduced him to the literary marketplace and helped establish his early reputation as a writer attentive to emotional intensity and the lives of ordinary people.
Eugénie Grandet is a French realist novel about family power, money, inheritance, and emotional repression. Balzac’s detailed social observation had a strong influence on many nineteenth-century writers, including Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky translated from French while still a young man in Saint Petersburg.
The fact is sometimes confused with Poor Folk, which was Dostoevsky’s first original novel and his first major literary success. Eugénie Grandet was not written by Dostoevsky; it was Balzac’s novel in Russian translation.