Crime and Punishment pays woman who chanced on Dostoevsky rarity

First English-language edition of the classic novel found in £14 box of secondhand books fetches £13,500 at auction

Fyodor Dostoevsky may have been pressured to write by his ever-growing gambling debts, but one woman’s gamble on a £14 box of books has resulted in the discovery and sale of a lucrative, rare first edition of his classic novel Crime and Punishment.

The novel, which follows the mental torment and moral dilemmas of student Rodion Raskolnikov who feels driven to commit murder, was first serialised in a Russian magazine in 1866 and published in two volumes a year later. It was first published in English in London in 1886, as an unassuming blue volume in Vizetelly’s One-Volume Novels series.

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