FitzLyon, Kyril, and Tatiana Browning. Before the Revolution: Russia and Its People under the Czar, Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1978.

Contains over three hundred black and white photographs of cities and villages of Russia, taken between 1894 and 1917. Many of the scenes photographed would have been familiar to Dostoevsky, who died in 1881.

Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Four volumes of this masterful biography have been published so far, covering Dostoevsky's life from 1821 through 1871. Widely considered the best literary biography available.

Jackson, Robert Louis, ed. Dostoevsky: New Perspectives, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984.

Contains fourteen relatively recent essays providing critical analysis of Dostoevsky's most important works. Included are three essays on The Brothers Karamazov and one, by Jacques Catteau, that concludes that "The Grand Inquisitor" is tragic but ultimately hopeful.

Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch, and Richard F. Gustafson, eds. Russian Religious Thought, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press...