It was in those days that he sent the manuscript to Stepan Shevyryov, the well-known critic who at the time worked for Moskvityanin and who advised the author to re-write the novel.
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Written in 1844-1846 under the original title Is She to Blame?, it was published only in 1858, in Biblioteka dlya chteniya magazine (vol. 147, books 1 and 2).