“Books are Not a Сommodity”: Book Publishers and Booksellers in the Notebooks of the Dostoevskys 1875–1877

Abstract

Based on the material of F. M. Dostoevsky’s 1875–1876 notebook, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, fund 212.1.15, as well as on the material of A. G. Dostoevskaya’s 1876–1877 notebook and subscription books (preserved in the Manuscripts Department of the Russian State Library, fund 93.III.2.1 and in the Department of the Manuscripts of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskiy Dom), Russian Academy of Sciences, fund 100, no. 30729), the article examines certain names of book publishers and the booksellers with whom the Dostoevskys dealt in the mid-1870s. The commentary on these names is most often absent in the first academic Complete works of the writer (in 30 volumes) and in the publication of this notebook of Dostoevsky in volume 83 of the Literary Heritage series, or it is too brief. The purpose of the author is to supplement the existing commentary or to provide new one, as well as to clarify some of the names, based on the entries from A. G. Dostoevskaya’s notebook and signature books (which were written in a handwriting close to calligraphic) and literature on publishing and book trade in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. The article not only provides extended commentary on such famous names as F. A. Bitepage, M. O. Wolf, Ya. A. Isakov, but also reviews biographies and clarifies the readings of names from Dostoevsky’s notebook of the following book publishers and booksellers A. I. Bortnevsky, F. I. Kolesov, F. G. Mikhin, A. I. Manukhin, I. P. Semennikov.