Autographs in Italian: A. G. Dostoevskaya’s Collection

Abstract

The wife of F. M. Dostoevsky was one of the first female collectors in Russia. The article examines her collecting activities, which included collecting postage stamps and autographs of world historical figures, based on archival sources. The motivation and support for this undertaking were provided by the writer himself, and the "suppliers" were his correspondents and acquaintances. The article focuses on autographs in Italian in the collection of A. G. Dostoevskaya, which are stored at the department of manuscripts of the Russian State Library. These are five undated letters of famous Italians received from A. N. Jacobi (Peshkova-Toliverova), who lived in Italy in the 1860s and had a wide social circle there. A. N. Jacobi had been familiar with the Dostoevskys since the mid-1870s, and continued to communicate with Anna Grigorievna even after the writer's death. Among the documents handed over to A. N. Jacobi are a letter from the poet Aleardo Aleardi to the artist Guglielmo de Sanctis, a letter addressed to her from the Italian opera singer Elisa Volpini, politician Ricciotti Garibaldi (son of J. Garibaldi) and two letters from the Italian actor Ernesto Rossi. The sixth autograph in Italian in the collection of A. G. Dostoevsky is a letter to her from a fan of Dostoevsky’s work by the Sardinian writer Grazia Deledda in 1912. In this letter, the future winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature expressed her admiration and love for the "powerful genius" Dostoevsky. Grazia Deledda not only communicated in writing with Dostoevsky's widow, but also met with his daughter Lyubov in Italy in the 1910s. The article introduces unique letters in Italian from the collection of A. G. Dostoevskaya into scientific circulation for the first time, and provides their translation into Russian. These documents are of double value: as autographs of famous historical figures and as collection items of Dostoevsky's wife.