The beginnings of the study of Polish literary regionalism are usually traced back to the interwar period, and in particular Stefania Skwarczyńska’s Regionalism and the main approaches in the theory of literature, published in 1937. Although this book is believed is be the pioneering work of literary regionalism in Poland, the trail was in fact blazed over fi fty years earlier by Bronisław Chlebowski’s study of the role regional variation in the development of Polish literature. He was inspired by Hippolyte Taine’s concept of milieu and Friedrich Ratzel’s anthropogeography. This article claims that Chlebowski’s theory of territoriality, as it was called by Wacław Borowy, both in its general outlines and in some particulars, is a thought-provoking methodological project and a valuable reference point for current regionalist research. The article also muses over the reasons why Chlebowski’s groundbreaking approach failed to attract followers.