Józef Ignacy Kraszewski

Józef Ignacy Krasicki (28 July 1812 – 19 March 1887) was a Polish writer, publisher, historian, journalist, scholar, painter, and author who produced more than 200 novels and 150 novellas, short stories, and art reviews, which makes him the most prolific writer in the history of Polish literature and the seventh most prolific in the world. He is best known for his epic series on the history of Poland, comprising twenty-nine novels in seventy-nine parts. The son of a nobleman, Kraszewski studied at the University of Vilna between 1829 and 1830. He was imprisoned from 1830 to 1832 for participating in a secret patriotic organization. Banished from Congress Poland in 1863, he settled in Dresden, where he remained until 1884. Throughout his life he was active in publishing and journalism. He began publishing in 1830, gradually evolving from a romantic to a realist writer. His literary legacy consists of about 600 volumes of prose, poetry, drama, literary criticism and works on history and philosophy. A major Polish novelist, Kraszewski is known for his cycle of novels on the history of Poland (29 novels in 78 volumes), written between 1876 and 1887, of which the best from an artistic standpoint are The Countess Cosel (1874), Brühl (1875), and An Ancient Tale (1876). Kraszewski's "peasant" novels, including Ulana (1843) and Ostap Bondarczuk (1847), deal with the painful problems of the serf society and community. Outstanding among his social novels on contemporary themes are The Magic Lantern (1843–44) and Morituri (1874–75). The classic Polish realist writers regarded Kraszewski as their forerunner and mentor, however as a novelist writing about the history of Poland, Kraszewski is generally regarded as second only to the Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz.Kraszewski was considered a real cultural institution uplifting the Polish spirit during the country's partition.