# Is "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Tipografiya brat'ev Panteleevykh, 1881) is identified by: Russian true first (book form): Brat'ya Karamazovy: roman v chetyrekh chastyakh s epilogom, printed by the Panteleev Brothers press, St. CORRECTION to the census entry: the first book edition was published in St.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Russian true first (book form): Brat'ya Karamazovy: roman v chetyrekh chastyakh s epilogom, printed by the Panteleev Brothers press, St
- Petersburg, title page dated 1881 but actually issued in December 1880, in two volumes (collating about 509 and 699 pages; some copies are collated 510 and 700), from a printing of 3,000 copies, roughly half of which sold within days of Christmas 1880
- The half-titles are present in a complete set and are the element most often missing
- The text had already run as a serial in Russkiy Vestnik (The Russian Messenger) from January 1879 to November 1880, so the December 1880 two-volume set is the first separate/book edition and not the first appearance in print
- Copies are normally found in near-contemporary Russian bindings — quarter calf over pebble-grain cloth with gilt Cyrillic spine lettering is typical — rather than in publisher's covers
- First edition in English: William Heinemann, London, 1912, translated by Constance Garnett, the first volume of her series "The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky." The American issue — The Macmillan Company, New York, 1912 — was made up from the British sheets with a cancel title page; that cancel is the decisive point, since a Macmillan copy is physically the Heinemann printing under a substituted title leaf
- Publisher imprint reads Tipografiya brat'ev Panteleevykh

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Fyodor Dostoevsky |
| Publisher | Tipografiya brat'ev Panteleevykh |
| Year | 1881 |
| True first | American edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Russian true first (book form): Brat'ya Karamazovy: roman v chetyrekh chastyakh s epilogom, printed by the Panteleev Brothers press, St |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Russian true first (book form): Brat'ya Karamazovy: roman v chetyrekh chastyakh s epilogom, printed by the Panteleev Brothers press, St. Petersburg, title page dated 1881 but actually issued in December 1880, in two volumes (collating about 509 and 699 pages; some copies are collated 510 and 700), from a printing of 3,000 copies, roughly half of which sold within days of Christmas 1880. The half-titles are present in a complete set and are the element most often missing. The text had already run as a serial in Russkiy Vestnik (The Russian Messenger) from January 1879 to November 1880, so the December 1880 two-volume set is the first separate/book edition and not the first appearance in print. Copies are normally found in near-contemporary Russian bindings — quarter calf over pebble-grain cloth with gilt Cyrillic spine lettering is typical — rather than in publisher's covers. First edition in English: William Heinemann, London, 1912, translated by Constance Garnett, the first volume of her series "The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky." The American issue — The Macmillan Company, New York, 1912 — was made up from the British sheets with a cancel title page; that cancel is the decisive point, since a Macmillan copy is physically the Heinemann printing under a substituted title leaf.

## Is this the true first?
CORRECTION to the census entry: the first book edition was published in St. Petersburg (Panteleev Brothers press), not Moscow, with the title page dated 1881 and issue in December 1880; it follows the Russkiy Vestnik serialisation of 1879–80, which is where the text first appeared. For English, both editions of 1912 are collected and both should be named: William Heinemann, London is the first edition in English, and The Macmillan Company, New York is the first American — but the Macmillan is not a separate printing, being the Heinemann sheets with a cancelled title page, and the London issue is by far the less often seen of the two. Later English versions — revisions of Garnett, and the Pevear and Volokhonsky and other retranslations — are "first thus" only.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented for the 1880/1881 Russian first or the 1912 Heinemann first in the sources consulted. The reprint field is otherwise dense: the Heinemann Garnett text was reprinted for decades and reset for series issues, and the New York Macmillan issue — British sheets under a cancel title — is routinely catalogued as a plain "first edition," which it is only in the sense of being the first American issue of the Heinemann printing.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Brothers Karamazov* by Fyodor Dostoevsky a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-brothers-karamazov
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.