The biographies of the journalists of Polish press published in West Prussia in the 19th and early 20th century usually highlight their patriotic commitment and admirable perseverance in launching and running various newspapers and journals. However, we can also find in their lives episodes that did them little credit, or even were downright disgraceful.
The second part of this article examines the content of the main sections of the weekly magazine Przyjaciel Dzieci [The Children’s Friend] (1892–1911), i.e. popular science; travel, geographical and ethnographical materials; biography; a section called “teaching actions”; and religion. Also covered are miscellanea, practical tips, puzzles and cartoons, as well as new sections “About the World” and “Educational Games and Entertainment”. Finally, the article looks at a review published by Poradnik dla Czytających Książki [A Guide for Book Readers] in 1901, whose author claims that some of the information in Przyjaciel Dzieci is outdated or obsolete.
This article examines the occasional verse published by the daily Czas [Time] in 1864–1879, i.e. over a decade and a half after the suppression of the January Rising. These texts, which feature both solemn occasions and local ephemera, present us with a unique chronicle of life of Cracow and its environs. In addition to listing all the relevant texts, the article attempts to identify their authors, i.e. unlock their initials or pseudonyms, to outline the conventions and genological peculiarities of that verse, and to gauge the attitudes of the Cracovians towards the question of Poland’s independence, Romanticism, patriotism as well as some well-known authority figures.
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.
This article outlines the rise and development of popular science periodicals in Poland from the 18th century until 1939. Their history begins in 1758 with the publication of Nowe Wiadomości Ekonomiczne i Uczone [Latest Economic and Learned News]. Our corpus includes 128 periodicals representing a great diversity of formats and content.