Fyodor Dostoevsky First Editions

• The Idiot — 1874 · First separate book edition, St. PetersburgTrue first appearance is the Russian serial in Russkiy Vestnik (The Russian Messenger), 1868-1869; the first separate book edition followed in St. Petersburg in 1874, issued through Anna Dostoevskaya's own publishing venture with the text revised by Dostoevsky (some bibliographies therefore count the serial as the 'first' and the 1874 book as the 'second' edition). Granular first-state points (wrappers/binding…. Russian is the true first (serial 1868-69; first book edition 1874, St. Petersburg). First English is Vizetelly & Co., London, 1887 (Whishaw); the London house is publisher of record with Brentano's, New York, as US distributor, so the UK imprint has precedence over any separate US appearance. An 1882 St. Petersburg edition (styled 'third edition' on the title) is a later Russian reprint. The ubiquitous Constance Garnett translation (Heinemann, 1913) is a much later English reprint/'first thus,' not the first English edition.
• The Brothers Karamazov — 1881 · Tipografiya brat'ev PanteleevykhRussian true first (book form): Brat'ya Karamazovy: roman v chetyrekh chastyakh s epilogom, printed by the Panteleev Brothers press, St. Petersburg, title page dated 1881 but actually issued in December 1880, in two volumes (collating about 509 and 699 pages; some copies are collated 510 and 700), from a printing of 3,000 copies, roughly half of which sold within days of Christmas 1880. The half-titles are…. CORRECTION to the census entry: the first book edition was published in St. Petersburg (Panteleev Brothers press), not Moscow, with the title page dated 1881 and issue in December 1880; it follows the Russkiy Vestnik serialisation of 1879–80, which is where the text first appeared. For English, both editions of 1912 are collected and both should be named: William Heinemann, London is the first edition in English,…. No book-club issue is documented for the 1880/1881 Russian first or the 1912 Heinemann first in the sources consulted. The reprint field is otherwise dense: the Heinemann Garnett text was reprinted for decades and reset for series issues, and the New York Macmillan issue — British sheets under a cancel title — is routinely catalogued as a plain "first edition," which it is only in the sense of being the first….
• The Brothers Karamazov (Brat'ya Karamazovy) — 1881 · Bratya PanteleevyTrue first appearance: serially in Russkii Vestnik (The Russian Messenger), January 1879 – November 1880. First edition in book form: Panteleev Brothers, St. Petersburg, title-dated 1881 but actually released December 1880, in two volumes, text in Russian Cyrillic, paginated 509 and 699 pp. The half-titles are the key point — they are present in the first edition and are frequently absent from surviving copies,…. CENSUS CORRECTED. The census gives the first book edition as Moscow; it is St. Petersburg, published by the Panteleev Brothers, 1881 (released December 1880). The Russkii Vestnik serial (1879–80) was the Moscow journal in which the novel first appeared, which is likely the source of the census's city error. The first English-language edition is Constance Garnett's translation, William Heinemann, London, 1912 —…. The significant reprint tell on the English side: the American edition (Macmillan) was made up from the British Heinemann sheets with a cancelled title page, and is the more commonly encountered of the two — check whether the title leaf is a cancel (a stub or uneven conjugacy at the title) before treating a copy as the London first. Garnett's translation was reprinted continuously through the 20th century and is….
• Crime and Punishment — 1886 · Vizetelly & Co.The first English-language edition was published by Vizetelly & Co., London, in April 1886, as number XIII in Vizetelly's 'One-Volume Novels' series, translated (via Victor Derely's 1884 French version rather than directly from the Russian) in a translation usually credited to Frederick Whishaw, although bibliographer Maurice B. Line has argued that attribution originates from an error in the 1911 Everyman's…. The Vizetelly London edition (April 1886) precedes the Crowell New York edition (October 1886), which reprints the same English text. Most surviving Vizetelly-imprint copies are later issues without the verso-of-half-title advertisement of the true first; twentieth-century Everyman's Library, Modern Library, and Penguin editions use entirely different, direct-from-Russian translations (by Garnett, Coulson, Pevear and Volokhonsky, and others) unconnected to the 1886 first edition's text.

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