SOURCE: “The Double of Dostoevsky,” in Modern Language Notes, Vol. 59, No. 5, May, 1944, pp. 317–21.

In the following essay, Manning provides a brief analysis of The Double.

The Double marks Dostoyevsky's first attempt to delve deeply into the mysteries of human psychology, but, despite the high hopes with which he published the book, it did not prove successful and many years later in the Journal of a Writer, November, 1877 (ed. Lazhechnikov, p. 456), he confessed,

This story positively did not succeed, but the idea was quite brilliant, and I never introduced into literature anything more serious than this idea. But the form of this story was absolutely not successful. I corrected it afterwards strongly, fifteen years later, for the then “Complete Collection” of my works, but I was then again convinced, that this thing was completely unsuccessful, and if I should now work on this idea and express it again, I...