The problems of the chronological attribution of “the first” notebook of F. M. Dostoevsky

The article envisages the problems of the chronological attribution of F. M. Dostoevsky’s “first” notebook kept in the Manuscripts Department of the Russian State Library (Fund 93.I.2.6). All the dating information related both to the notebook in whole and to its particular records, is specified. Analysis of the manuscript, comparison of biographic and literary data and calculations administrated by Dostoevsky from January of 1860 till October of 1862 allow explaining and clarifying the dates given for the first time in the notebook published in volume 83 of “The Literary Heritage”, and withdrawing from the dating (1861-1862) offered by V. S. Nechaeva in “The Description of the Manuscripts of F. M. Dostoevsky”. The dates of particular records, that permit to define the extreme dates of filling in the notebook, are specified in the article. A lot of questions touched upon in the article are of a polemical character and need further researches.