Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, journalist, short-story writer whose works had a profound influence on the 20th century novel. Most of his important works were written after 1864: Notes from Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1865-6), The Gambler (1866), The Idiot (1869), The Devils (1871) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Ronald Meyer teaches Russian literary translation at Columbia University. He is the editor of the Penguin edition of Dostoyevsky's Demons, translated by Robert A. Maguire (2008), and Anna Akhmatova's My Half-Century: Selected Prose (1992); co-translator, with David Lowe, of The Complete Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, volume 1 (1988); and co-editor of Russian Literature of the 1920s: An Anthology (1987).