Anna Janko’s latest novel Finalistka [ The Finalist] (2021) contains a catalogue of ill-nesses that the main character, the poet Hanka M., has to struggle with. The book, which in many ways resembles a patient’s diary, is a record of the battles Hanka, the author’s alter ego, has to fight with the enemy which happens to be her own body. The article considers the strategies she employs to hold her body in check as it repeatedly lets her down and, in effect, becomes her enemy. Its disconcerting strangeness strikes her every time she slips into a search for the signs and symptoms of ageing (her reflections at this point are compared with those of Simone de Beauvoir and some other writers). In Finalistka suffering from illnesses is inscribed into life’s transience which is not just human but universal, and at the same time particular, affecting both men and women. Nonetheless, it is the woman’s perspective that this article finds more interesting.

Twentieth-century historians of Polish literature (e.g. Henryk Markiewicz and Grażyna Borkowska) unanimously agree that Waleria Marrené-Morzkowska was at best a second-rank writer. It seems that such negative opinions are founded, fi rst of all, on the critics’ low view of her favourite genre, the popular romance; and secondly on a critical survey of her work written in 1966 by Irena Wyczańska for a multivolume Guide to Polish Literature of the 19th and 20th Century (Obraz literatury polskiej XIX i XX wieku). This article attempts to revise the established view of her fiction by analyzing some of works, i.e. two novels, Leonora’s Husband (Mąż Leonory, 1883) and The Little Blue Book (Błękitna książeczka, 1876), and the short story A Duplex Woman (Dwoista, 1889). This reappraisal draws on the favourable assessments of her work of the first generation of her readers, among them writer Teodor Jeske-Choiński, literary historian Henryk Galle and Piotr Chmielowski, a leading literary scholar of the late 19th century. In their view her work rose above the level of run-of-the-mill romances and didactic fi ction thanks to her skill in combining the conventions of the realist novel with plots of popular romance.

Current research into the life and work of Kazimiera Alberti, a poet and writer popular in the interwar period, connected from 1930 with Biała Krakowska, owes a great deal to Jacek Proszyk, who in 2009 staged a spectacle based on her biography at the Teatr Polski in Bielsko Biała called The Literary Salon of Kazimiera Alberti. It was followed by a spate of publications which, at this point, form a body of work ready for reassessment. This article deals with one of them, written by Karolina Pospiszil, where it is claimed that the heroine of Ci, którzy przyjdą ( Those Who Will Come, 1934), Helena Rumiszewska, is both a stereotyped, idealized female character. Focusing on the episodes which belie that description and show a character of considerable complexity driven by an emancipatory desire. She is not free from doubt when faced with various dilemmas, yet does she represent the ideal of the New Woman? This article addresses this question and discusses the issue of emancipation in the broader context of bourgeois culture and class, i.e. the social milieu o which Helena belongs.