Poor Folk - Reception

Reception

Poor Folk received nationwide critical acclaim. Dostoyevsky observed that "the whole of Russia is talking about my Poor Folk". As soon as he read the manuscript for Poor Folk, Belinsky named it Russia's first "social novel". Alexander Herzen praised the book in his essay "About the Progress of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia", noting the book's "socialistic tendencies and animations." The work was classified by critic Pavel Annenkov as a work of the so-called "natural school". The newspaper The Northern Bee recorded:

News about a new genius, Mr. Dostoevsky, is circulating across St. Petersburg. We do not know whether it is his real name or a pen-name. The reading audience is praising his new novel, Poor People. I have read this novel and said: 'Poor Russian readers!' However, Mr. Dostoevsky is a man of some talent and, if he finds his way in literature, he will be able to write something decent." —The Northern Bee, 1 February 1848, no. 27

Nikolay Dobrolyubov in the 1861 essay "Dowtrodden People", that Dostoyevsky studies poor reality and expresses humanistic ideas. He also praised him for illustrating human nature and taking out "souls in the centre of the depth which are caged after protesting for indentity against the exterior, violent pressure, and presents it to our verdict."

Apollon Grigoriev wrote in The Finnish Herald: "Dostoevsky starts to play in our literature the same role Hoffmann played in German literature ... He became so deeply immersed in the life of civil servants that the dull and uninteresting everyday life became for him a nightmare close to madness." Count Vladimir Sollogub also liked the novel, stating that "it was written with force and simplicity by a great talent." Valerian Maykov noted after a number of publications by Dostoyevsky: "Gogol was usually the leading social poet, while Dostoyevsky usually the leading psychological poet. The former is known as the representative of the contemporary society or contemporary circle, for the latter the society itself becomes interesting through its influence on other people."

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