For Dostoevsky, the early 1860s were excruciatingly difficult. After a series of misfortunes compounded by gambling and family debts, he wrote at a feverish pace to pay his creditors. His fortunes changed in 1867 when he remarried and his financial circumstances improved. He wrote his greatest novels during those comparatively comfortable last years of his life-Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880)