The Insulted and Humiliated was completed after Dostoevsky's penal service and exile, and published on his return to Petersburg. The narrator is Ivan Petrovich, a young aspiring writer. His literary debut, working methods, and social situation were taken from Dostoevsky's own life. The hero falls from the fame into poverty. When the book appeared it was coldly received by the critics. Dostoevsky defended the work in an open letter, writing that he knew for certain that even though the novel should be a failure, there would be poetry in it, and the two most important characters would be portrayed truthfully and even artistically.