Later Career
In December 1859, Dostoyevsky returned to
Saint Petersburg, where he ran a series of unsuccessful literary journals,
Vremya (Time) and
Epokha (Epoch), with his older brother Mikhail. The latter was shut down as a consequence of its coverage of the
Polish Uprising of 1863. That year Dostoyevsky traveled to Europe and frequented the gambling casinos. There he met Apollinaria Suslova, the model for Dostoyevsky's "proud women", such as the two characters named Katerina Ivanovna, in
Crime and Punishment and
The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoyevsky was devastated by his wife's death in 1864, which was followed shortly thereafter by his brother's death. He was financially crippled by business debts; furthermore, he decided to assume the responsibility of his deceased brother's outstanding debts, and he also provided for his wife's son from her earlier marriage and his brother's widow and children. Dostoyevsky sank into a deep
depression, frequenting gambling parlors and accumulating massive losses at the tables.
Dostoyevsky suffered from an acute
gambling compulsion and its consequences. By one account[
who?] he completed
Crime and Punishment, possibly his best known novel, in a mad hurry because he was in urgent need of an advance from his publisher. He had been left practically penniless after a gambling spree. Dostoyevsky wrote
The Gambler simultaneously in order to satisfy an agreement with his publisher Stellovsky who, if he did not receive a new work, would have claimed the copyrights to all of Dostoyevsky's writings.