This article examines two forms of 19th-century animal magnetism. The fi rst had its roots in early 19th-century Romanticism, the other fl ourished on the fringe of orthodox science and medicine in the last decades of the century. Common to both is a confl ation of scientifi c experimentation, hermetic thought and popular culture. Mesmerism represented a peculiar, excitingly unorthodox face of 19th-century modernity. Now largely discredited and forgotten, it fed on the contemporary enthusiasm for scientifi c discoveries and confi dence in the human ability to do virtually anything. What distinguished mesmerism from other vitalist theories was its claim to shift the boundary between physics and metaphysics.

This article deals with Fryderyk Chopin's juvenilia and the occasional verse dedicated to him by his his relatives and friends. Extraordinarily diverse in tone and nature (versified happy birthday and nameday messages, friendship book entries, humorous and partying verse), they offer unexpected insights into various aspects of the composer's biography and his participation in the literary culture of his epoch, especially the more private occasions and celebrations.

This article examines the history of periodicals which have been published in Sandomierz, or had an ongoing interest in the town, since 1816, when the first publication of this kind went into print. Apart from the Polish segment, the article covers periodicals in Latin, German, English, Russian and Dutch. So far c. 230 items on wide range of themes have been sourced to Sandomierz.

Od początku XIX w. ewolucja stosunków ekonomicznych i skomplikowane uwarunkowania polityczne na ziemiach polskich zmuszały, a jednocześnie umożliwiały części ziemianek podejmowanie aktywności gospodarczej. Co prawda, już w okresie staropolskim zdarzało się, że kobiety zarządzały dobrami ziemskimi i prowadzeniem tzw. żeńskiego gospodarstwa, ale przełom wieków XIX i XX wraz z industrialno-cywilizacyjnymi przemianami nadawał ich obecności w majątkach nową jakość. Ziemianki stawały się oficjalnymi współgospodarzami dóbr, odpowiedzialnymi za ich finansową kondycję. W artykule podjęte zostały zagadnienia związane z udziałem i wkładem ziemianek zarówno w rozwój własnych majątków, jak i życie gospodarcze Królestwa Polskiego w okresie przełomu stuleci. Postawione w tekście pytania, m.in. o preferowane przez ziemianki branże rolniczej wytwórczości, nie tylko tradycyjne, lecz także mniej typowe, pozwalają zauważyć wzrost aspiracji kobiet wypowiadających się w prasie i czasopismach fachowych na tematy gospodarcze, jak i nie zawsze udane zmagania z twardymi prawami rynku. Specyfika ziemianek – przedstawicielek elit – kierowała je w stronę poszukiwania europejskich inspiracji czy wzorców, znajdowanych w gospodarczych podróżach. Zdobytą wiedzę i umiejętności przekładały na własną działalność i na społecznym forum dzieliły się doświadczeniami. Coraz częściej też pojawiały się obok mężczyzn jako równoprawne działaczki gospodarcze, podejmujące mniej lub bardziej udane próby samodzielnej aktywności, warunkowanej finansową niezależnością. Zdobywały ją na drodze ewolucji i raczej powolnymi przemianami mentalności charakterystycznej dla środowiska, z którego się wywodziły.

Joris-Karl Huysmans, one of the most prominent French writers of the turn of the twentieth century, began his literary career as a naturalist, a promising disciple of Emile Zola. He departed from these ideals in his best-known novel A rebours (1884), considered the “bible of decadence”. Its protagonist, the eccentric misanthrope des Esseintes, withdraws from society to indulge in contemplation in solitude, studying rare prints and seeking beauty in the singular. He appreciates the scandalising works of writers such as Barbey d,Aurevilly and Baudelaire. These authors have been accused of promoting satanism. Durtal, the protagonist of the novel Lă-bas, goes even further, in which we find contemporary echoes of satanism, attempts to revive the ritual of the black mass or a fascination with cruelty. Ultimately, however – and this is best evidenced in subsequent works ( En route, La Cathédrale, L,Oblat) satanism brings disillusionment. A return to the Christian religion, which Huysmans nevertheless interprets in an original way, becomes inevitable.

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.

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.

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 presents Jewish mutual aid associations in the Kingdom of Poland in the nineteenth century. Among the discussed matters are: the legal foundations for organising associations of this type, the chronology of their establishment, the socio-professional character of the founders and members, the attitudes of the authorities towards the creation and operation of these associations. The article is based on original, previously rarely used archives. There were 67 associations established in the discussed time period, including 32 in the Piotrków district (gubernia) and 17 in the Warsaw district.

This paper discusses selected types of native, appellative-form surnames of the inhabitants of 19th-century Cieszyn Silesia and its surrounding areas. Such appellative-form surnames (without derivative indicators) reflect the regional culture and values characteristic to, and cultivated by, the inhabitants of the region. An overview of them confirms that Cieszyn Silesia, as an ethnic-cultural borderland, stands out with its sub-regional distinctness in onymic stock. The described surnames not only reflect the values acknowledged by the inhabitants of 19th-century Cieszyn Silesia, showing the immanence of this set in the regional context, but they also depict the material and spiritual culture of the inhabitants of this region. The researcher used the semantic field method to analyse the anthroponymic material, and the sociolinguistic aspect of naming was considered when describing the collected set of appellative-based surnames, with references made to statistical research.

The article presents an analysis of debates surrounding the teaching of the classical languages in Poland during three pivotal moments in Polish history: after the failed November uprising against Russia of 1830, after Poland regained its independence in 1918, and after World War II and the advent of the Communist regime. In each of these historical moments concern for the place of Latin and Greek in the school system brought to the forefront the broader connections between teaching ancient culture and the classical languages and the values and culture of Western Europe.

The author analyses the history of scientific and public discourses growing around the phenom-enon of Głuchoniemcy (Deaf‑Germans) in Poland. In the literature, this term refers to the des-cendants of the German‑speaking colonists who settled in the Polish‑Ruthenian border in the mid‑fourteenth century. The history of interest in this phenomenon from the eighteenth to the twentieth century reflects the cultural changes and social tensions over time. These descendants of the German‑speaking colonists living in the Carpathian Foothills were mentioned for the first time in the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century as a regional phenomenon of cultural diversity. In the era of Romanticism, when the importance of national identity in Europe grew, so‑called Deaf Germans were portrayed as fully assimilated Polish settlers with only relics refer-ring to German culture. At the end of the nineteenth century, after the publication of Józef Szujski, they became the subject of a political debate and were placed in the context of peasant history. Finally, the socio‑political situation of the interwar period led to the term “Głuchoniemcy” being removed from scientific and public discourses for many decades. After World War II, the absence of the topic became permanent, still directly related to the Polish‑German antagonism that set the directions of scientific interests of ethnographers and historians in Poland. The article tries to answer the question about the course of these changes in the perception of Deaf Germans by looking for external causes as well as those resulting from the nature of the subject of interest.

In his article Author analyses two different approaches to Polish philosophy of the second half of the 19th century represented by Tadeusz Kroński and Andrzej Walicki.

This paper presents two photographs referred to as pannotypes (from the Latin word pannus) from an album of photographs. It discusses the history of the pannotype technique, which was popular in the 1850s and 1860s in photography ateliers all over the world (it presents a review of materials and substances used in this technique and the transferring of the negative layer onto a black, flexible substrate). Pannotype is one of the most interesting techniques used in the 19th century. The paper then discusses the Kórnik photographs, the people they show, and their dimensions and structural features. Some conservation-related remarks on the susceptibility of precious objects of this type to damage also follow.

Polish musical criticism of 19th century is a fascinating research field for musicologists, music theorists, as well as literary scholars. They can find there a wealth of texts whose expressive style tries to emulate the homage paid to the great virtuosos of the time in poetry. While Frederick Chopin and the violinist Karol Lipiński held sway over captive audiences, there was yet another musician whose name featured prominently in reviews and poems. It was Stanisław Szczepanowski, the great guitarist, whose concerts gave rise to numerous reviews representing the romantic school of musical criticism. This paper examines some of those reviews as well as two poems dedicated to Szczepanowski, one by Teofil Lenartowicz and the other by Władysław Syrokomla.

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 articles explores the life and work of Elżbieta Glaize Walkerowa, a forgotten poet from the early19th century and owner of a girls’ boarding school in Lwów. Hitherto unknown archival sources, which have been used to reconstruct her biography, reveal that she was a close relative of François Glaize, Poland's most eminent tapestry-weaver, with connections to the House of Działyński (the Trojanów branch). The second part the article focuses on Elżbieta Glaize's 1801 debut poetry volume Pierwiastki mojej muzy [ Elements of My Muse]. The poems, written in the sentimental style which was in fashion at that time, represent the sensitivity and worldview of a young woman who, having been raised in a home steeped in literary culture, was keen to showcase her own literary ambition.

This article examines the editorial work of Ignacy Szydłowski, who was in charge of Wizerunki i Roztrząsania Naukowe [ Scholarly Profiles and Research], a highbrow literary and historical magazine published between 1834 and 1843 by Zawadzki Brothers, Wilno's leading publisher and bookseller company. The periodical holds an important place in the history of Polish Lithuanian learned journals in the 19th century and provides the focus of the final phase of Ignacy Szydłowski's intellectual biography. The article detects a notable parallel between the evolution of Szydłowski's aesthetic views and changes in the character of the magazine he edited.

The statutes of the community Association for the Establishment and Maintenance of Early Childcare Facilities ( Verein zur Errichtung und Erhaltung von Klein-Kinder-Bewahr- Anstalten) dating to 1870 underlines the goal behind the activity of the organisation: the provision of appropriate day care to children aged from 2 to 7 years during the time when their unwealthy parents work. In compliance with the guidelines of the authorities of the Association, the staff of the facilities shaped the moral attitudes of the children, educated them, taught them hygiene habits, and provided them with a good start to subsequent stages of their school education by conducting classes. Towards the end of the 1860s, the four Facilities – located in the Old Town (as of 1839), in the Lower Town (as of 1844), in the Old Suburbs (as of 1848) and on the edge of the Main Town (as of 1858) – provided care to about 700 little children. The Association activated the inhabitants of Gdansk – not only the ones actively participating in the work of the organisation, but also the ones providing financial support and support in kind. What should be stressed is the involvement of women in the activity: they were not only members of the Association, but, in line with the 1870 Statutes – which was exceptional in the social realities of the time – could sit on the Governing Council ( Verwaltungs-Rath), and even (in one case) on the Board ( Vorstand).

This article tries to answer the question about the way the losses in the Battle of Tsushima, one of the key battles of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) were reported in contemporary Polish press, in particular Warsaw's leading daily newspaper Kurier Warszawski. The analysis, divided into sections, juxtaposes the actual press coverage with the matching accounts in the literature on the subject. As the number of items referring to the Tsuishma story is very large, only some have been included in the study, which concludes with a summary of the research results.

Artykuł charakteryzuje pismo „Moriah” wydawane we Lwowie w latach 1903–1924 jako miesięcznik młodzieży żydowskiej. Pismo ukazywało się w języku polskim i było trybuną środowiska syjonistycznego. „Moriah” zamieszczała teksty popularnonaukowe, głównie z zakresu historii i literatury żydowskiej oraz utwory literackie przedstawicieli literatury jidysz i hebrajskiej. Pismo realizowało model wychowania w duchu narodowo-żydowskim, ale przede wszystkim popularyzowało idee syjonizmu.

Przedmiotem rozważań jest analiza artykułów w czasopismach ukazujących się na przełomie XIX i XX w., które przedstawiały postać Jakuba Jasińskiego. Badaniami objęto następujące tytuły prasowe: „Czarno na Białem” (1939), „Echo Pragi” (1917), „Gazeta Warszawska” (1924), „Gazeta Wileńska” (1906), „Kurier Literacko-Naukowy” (1927), „Kurjer Polski” (1917), „Kurier Poranny” (1886), „Kurier Warszawski” (1917), „Nowa Reforma” (1918), „Nowa Gazeta” (1917), „Sybilla Nadwiślańska” (1821), „Świat” (1917), „Tygodnik Ilustrowany” (1917). Zamierzeniem autorów było ukazanie osoby Jasińskiego na tle historii Polski. Nawiązywano do Mickiewicza, jako tego, który starał się wynieść Jasińskiego do grona polskich patriotów. Obraz ten był wielokrotnie powielany.

Judging by his private diaries, which he kept for 34 years, the press as such was hardly a major concern for Michał Römer (1880–1945), a Polish-Lithuanian aca-demic and politician who occasionally took on the role of editor and journalist. Nonetheless the diaries are an important contemporary source and a veritable mine of information about the multilingual press published in Wilno between 1911 and 1915. In the second part of that decade Römer ceased to be an active player in that scene, but he kept a watchful eye over it and continued to analyze and comment on the dramatic shifts in Poland's and Lithuania's multilingual press market, a process driven by the changing fortunes of war and its political consequences.