ABSTRACT
I I N December 1869 Dostoevsky wrote to his friend, the poet Apollon Maikov, that he had conceived a 'tremendous novel' under the title, Atheism. On March 24th, 1870, he communicated some further particulars about his plan to Strakhov. Instead of one novel, he now intended to make five narratives, united by one and the same idea, and their general title was to be The Life of a Great Sinne1. Dostoevsky never wrote the series. The drafts left by him prove, however, that a number of his projected themes and problems were included in his last three novels: The Possessed, A Raw Youth, and The Brothers Karamazov.
