«A female author» from the country: attribution of the letter of Dostoevsky’s correspondent

A dynamic process of professionalization of literary activity in the 19th century involved female writers as well. In contrast to the opinion of many of his fellow reviewers and writers, F. M. Dostoevsky considered female education a way to moral renewal of Mankind and approved of women’s involvement in literary activity. Such a viewpoint of Dostoevsky used to evoke women’s confidence and encourage them to write to him in search of moral support and a trustworthy opinion. The Russian archives keep the letters of more than 20 female writers addressed to Dostoevsky. The authors of two of them remain unidentified up to now. The study of the letter of the third correspondent of Dostoevsky, an emerging author, unknown before, who sent to Dostoevsky the manuscripts of her writings in response to the review, has resulted in the attribution appeared in the given article. Having carried out textual analysis of the autograph, examined documentary, biographic, historic and literary sources, information of genealogy websites, the author has brought to a focuse and adduced arguments in favor of the opinion that the letter to Dostoevsky dated back to March 7th, 1877 and signed with a cryptonym M. Z. (in the text of the letter referred to as M. F. Z.) belongs to Maria Florianovna Kharkeevich (whose maiden name was Zavadskaya). She lived in the village Shatalovka of Voronezh province, in the estate of her husband Yakov Alekseevich Kharkeevich. Thus, the extant Kharkeevich mansion in the village Shatalovka as well as being an architectural landmark of the 19th century, takes on a new significance of a site of memory in the Russian rural area where the female author used to write letters to Dostoevsky.