In White Nights, the apparent idyll of the dreamer's romantic fantasies disguises profound loneliness and estrangement from "living life." A Gentle Creature and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man show how withdrawal from reality can end in spiritual desolation as well as moral indifference, and how, in Dostoevsky's view, the tragedy of the alienated individual can only be resolved by the rediscovery of a sense of compassion and responsibility toward other people.No other edition brings together these specific stories--which are most interesting when read alongside one another--and the new translations capture all the power and lyricism of Dostoevsky's writing at its best.

    It was first published in 1876 and later collected in Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches, 1880. It is one of Woolson's most frequently anthologized southern stories and can be read in multiple contexts for its complex portrayal of race, ethnicity, and sexuality.