Topic : Crime and Punishment

Main text

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
A few words about Dostoevsky himself may help the English reader to understand his
work.
Dostoevsky was the son of a doctor. His parents were very hard-working and deeply
religious people, but so poor that they lived with their five children in only two rooms.
The father and mother spent their evenings in reading aloud to their children, generally
from books of a serious character.
Though always sickly and delicate Dostoevsky came out third in the final examination of
the Petersburg school of Engineering. There he had already begun his [...]