Hania

9781589636477

1589636473

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1845-1916), was a Polish novelist; born at Wola Okrejska, in the Lukowschem, of Lithuanian parents, in 1845. He was educated at the University of Warsaw, after which he led a wanderling life, attached for a time to a nomadic band of gipsies. In 1876 he came to America, and spent some years in California seeking his fortune in the gold mines and writing of his adventures to the Warsaw magazines. Returning to his own country, he settled at Warsaw and gave himself up to the pursuit of literature. He then began the issue of the series of novels and historical romances which have won for him'inspired as they are by the loftiest patriotic sentiments'one of the first places in modern Polish literature. In 1872 he published at Warsaw a collection of humorous little stories which became very popular; and which was followed in 1874 by Szkica Weglem (Charcoal Sketches). His principal later works are: Ogniem i Mieczem (With Fire and Sword) (1885), an historical novel, which in less than ten years had red through more than thirty editions; Potop (The Deluge) (1886); Pan Michael, and Village Stones, and a complete collection of his works up to I 890, issued in twelve volumes, under the general title Pisma. Up to 1882 he had but little prominence in literature in Europe, for he is given but a brief notice m the History of Polish Literature, published in that year by Heinrich Nitschmann. His other works are: In Vain (1899); Quo Vadis? (1896) ; Without Dogma (1893); Children of the Soil (1895); In Monte Carlo (1899); Tales (1899); In the New Promised Land (I goo); The Knights of the Cross (1900); Sielanka, a Forest Picture, and Other Stories (1898).