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Buried Alive; or, Ten Years of Penal Servitude in Siberia.[The House of the Dead]
Fyodor Dostoevsky
New York, 1881
 
The first American edition of Dostoevsky’s first novel published in English.
 
Spine a shade toned, general wear and scuffing to covers, binding a bit skewed, but overall a Very Good copy with a bright cover and crisp interior. Contemporary owner signature on front endpaper.  A respectable copy of a book generally found appearing as if it too was abandoned in Siberia.
 
The U.K. edition was published in January 1881, and this American edition followed in April. It has the same pictorial cloth design and main textblock, but with a different title page, preliminary leaves, and ads.
 
“Sentenced to death for advocating socialism in 1849, Dostoevsky served a commuted sentence of four years of hard labor. The account he wrote afterward is filled with vivid details of brutal punishments, shocking conditions, and the psychological effects of the loss of freedom and hope, but also of the feuds and betrayals, the moments of comedy, and the acts of kindness he observed. As a nobleman and a political prisoner, Dostoevsky was despised by most of his fellow convicts, and his first-person narrator - a nobleman who has killed his wife – experiences a similar struggle to adapt. He also undergoes a transformation over the course of his ordeal, as he discovers that even among the most debased criminals there are strong and beautiful souls. The House of the Dead reveals the prison as a tragedy both for the inmates and for Russia. It endures as a monumental meditation on freedom.”(Penguin)
 
Ref: The Reception of Fedor Dostoevskii in Britain(1869-1935), Lucia Aiello