Fyodor Dostoevsky inspiration for his writing. They continued their trip through Germany, visiting Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Heidelberg and Karlsruhe. They spent five weeks in Baden-Baden, where Dostoevsky had a quarrel with Turgenev and again lost much money at the roulette table. The couple travelled on to Geneva. In September 1867, Dostoevsky began work on "The Idiot", and after a prolonged planning process that bore little resemblance to the published novel, he eventually managed to write the first 100 pages in only 23 days; the serialisation began in "The Russian Messenger "in January 1868. Their first child, Sonya, had been conceived in Baden-Baden, and
Fyodor Dostoevsky literature. His 1864 novella "Notes from Underground" is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature. Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, "Poor Folk", which