November 10 — on the eve of his 45th birthday, Fyodor Dostoevsky finished the novel "The Gambler".
In 1863, Fyodor Dostoevsky came to Baden-Baden for a holiday. There, in just a few days, he gambled away not only all his own money, but also the cash of his companion Polina Suslova. Dostoevsky faced debtors' prison, so in the summer of 1866 he was forced to sign a ruinous contract with the publisher Fyodor Stellovsky, selling him for 3,000 rubles the rights to publish a complete three-volume collection of his works and a new novel, which had to be delivered by November 14.
To speed up the work, friends advised the writer to make use of the free help of the best student of the St. Petersburg school of shorthand, his admirer, Anna Snitkina.
On the eve of his 45th birthday, on November 10, 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky finished dictating to the 20-year-old stenographer Anna Snitkina the novel "The Gambler", which he had begun at 8 p.m. on October 16, just a few weeks earlier. On November 13 he delivered the manuscript to Stellovsky, and on November 20 he asked Anna for her hand in marriage.
1 Kopeck 1866.
YM (Yekaterinburg Mint).
