The Landlady

Dostoevsky conceived and began “The Landlady” in the autumn of 1846: “the work is going just as it did in ‘Poor Folk’—fresh, easy, and successful” (a letter to his brother Mikhail, late October 1846). The comparison with “Poor Folk” was not accidental. It was suggested to the author by the sense of the similar importance of these works in his creative development. A few months later the writer repeated the idea even more sharply about the closeness between his first novel and “The Landlady”: “I am writing my ‘The Landlady.’ It is already coming out even better than ‘Poor Folk.’ It’s of the same kind. Inspiration leads my pen—a spring gushing straight from the soul. Not like in ‘Prokharchin,’ with which I suffered all summer” (a letter to his brother Mikhail, January–February 1847).