The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881
The book, and the century it came out of.
A young man returns to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium with no money, no guile and an incurable habit of telling the truth, and Petersburg society decides what to do with him. Dostoevsky set out to portray a perfectly good man and admitted the task frightened him; he wrote the novel abroad, in debt, and considered it a failure. It is now the book his admirers defend most fiercely. Illustrated with 59 full-page plates — paintings by Aivazovsky, Biard and von Menzel among them.
Toward the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o’clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed.
The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Salon & Steppe
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 744 pages
- Reading time
- about 15 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785486701481
59 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
Written abroad, in flight from creditors, 1868
Dostoevsky wrote it in Switzerland and Italy, moving from city to city to stay ahead of his debts, having recently lost heavily at roulette. His first child died in Geneva while he was working on it.
He was also writing four years after the great reforms had begun to unsettle Russian society, and about a country in which a man with no money and no cunning was simply material. The plan, he told his niece, was to portray a positively good man — the hardest thing in the world, he said, because goodness has nothing to show.
This book in culture: 11 versions
Most people meet a book like this one on a screen first. Here are 8 of them, the earliest and the most recent among them — and none of them is the book.
The whole afterlife of The Idiot — screen, stage and beyond →
- 1921 Wandering Souls Carl Froelich
- 1946 The Idiot Georges Lampin
- 1958 Idiot Ivan Pyryev
- 1966 Au Hasard Balthazar Robert Bresson
- 2001 Down House Roman Kachanov
- 2003 The Idiot Vladimir Bortko miniseries
- — L'idiota Luciano Chailly dramatico-musical work
- — The Idiot Mieczysław Weinberg dramatico-musical work
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
The Idiot, first published 1869, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Salon & Steppe shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785486701481, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of The Idiot?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Fyodor Dostoevsky's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 744 pages, which is roughly about 15 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
