Józef Ignacy Kraszewski

Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (Warsaw, 1812 - Geneva, 1887) was a Polish novelist who also worked as a journalist, historian and publisher, and who is said to have painted and played music. He wrote in Polish, read and spoke French, and produced more than two hundred novels, which makes him the most prolific author in Polish literature. Today he is remembered above all for historical fiction that revisits the past of Poland.

Born into the minor nobility (szlachta), he spent much of his childhood at his maternal grandparents' house in Romanów, where his grandmother taught him French, history and drawing. He went to school in Biała Podlaska, Lublin and Svislach, then began studying medicine at the University of Vilnius before switching to literature and fine arts. His literary debut came in 1830 with several short stories, and a year later he published his first novel. That same period brought him prison: he had joined a movement in support of Polish independence and was held from December 1830 to March 1832.

He later became a landowner. The Russian authorities twice blocked his appointment to a professorship, regarding him as politically suspect, so he settled near Zhytomyr, where he worked as a school superintendent and ran the local theatre. His support for the abolition of serfdom made him unpopular with the regional nobility. In 1860 he moved to Warsaw to edit a newspaper, and after the January Uprising of 1863 he fled to Dresden, where he spent most of his remaining years. In 1883 he was arrested in Berlin on charges of working for French intelligence, and in 1884 he was sentenced to imprisonment in Magdeburg.

His writing mixes historical novels, social novels and stories of peasant life, in which he criticised feudalism and serfdom. His epic series on the history of Poland is his best-known achievement. His outlook was liberal-democratic and moderate rather than radical, and he is often seen as a forerunner of Polish Positivism. He died in Geneva in 1887. His legacy lies in shaping the Polish historical novel and in portraying rural life with a critical eye.