The princess Natalia Shalikova is F. M. Dostoyevsky’s pen friend

In the framework of the study of the editorial archive of the daily “Grazhdanin” (1872-1879) there has been made an attempt of the commented publication of the letters of Natalia Shalikova, writer, publicist, free-lance author of the journal “Grazhdanin”, to Fedor Dostoevsky (1815–1878). The article studies the question of the verification of the date put down on Shalikova’s letter to Dostoevsky – the 12th of April of 1877. The author’s date of the letter has been questioned twice, first by Anna Dostoevskaya who dated it of 1872, and then, by researchers of the Manuscripts Department in the National Library of Russia and by the authors of the reference book “The Description of Dostoevsky’s Manuscripts” (Moscow, 1957), who dated the letter of April 12th, 1874. The analysis of the content of Shalikova’s letter and its comparison with other archival materials shows that the author’s date of the April 12th, 1877 is correct and does not need to be specified.