Graphical peculiarities of Dostoevsky's manuscripts: materials for the information database

The article is dedicated to the analysis of graphical peculiarities of Dostoevsky's handwritten texts based on the materials of his notebooks and workbooks. A special emphasis is placed on the study of the peculiarities of hand writing and graphological analysis of the materials of the notebook dated back to 1854-1860 and of that one of 1860-1862. A preliminary version of the mark alphabet has been compiled that will be enriched while studying further the manuscripts. Each mark is provided with a necessary textual commentary both in regard to a particular letter and to the whole of observations resulted from the contextual analysis of author's writings. The materials of this article represent the first attempt to elaborate the “ABC Book of Dostoevsky”, with eventual practical application of the received results in future. A detailed characteristic of the writer's hand writing makes it possible to read the texts more precisely and to carry on a substantiated work with the so called “complicated reading”, that is the scribbles in Dostoevsky's manuscripts. A chronological coherent acquisition of information about the hand writing and the correlation of marks with their contextual analysis will allow create a resupplied Information database for textual critics and researchers of the writer's works. The materials of the database could be useful in research and publishing activity.