Lagraziana's Kalliopeion
This is a blog about my reads as well as everything related to them.
My taste is for good quality literature - old and new. Some of it I review here or on my main book blog Edith's Miscellany.
Henryk Sienkiewicz's Female Rival for the Nobel Prize 1905
There are many female writers who during their lifetime didn't get the deserved attention and are forgotten as soon as they have breathed their last. On the international level this is certainly true for the Polish novelist Eliza Orzeszkowa although she was not just twice been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but actually very close to winning it both times. In 1905 her fellow-countryman Henryk Sienkiewicz carried off the prestigious award and in 1909 the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf took it home to Sweden.
But who was this Polish woman who competed with the great literary men and women of her time including Leo Tolstoy? However well-remembered she and her work may still be in Poland, outside her country hardly anyone has ever heard of Eliza Orzeszkowa although her writings have long entered into the public domain. Only very few of her books are available in translation, even on Project Gutenberg. This remarkable nineteenth-century novelist definitely deserves better and so I gave her room on my blog Edith's Miscellany.
Click here to read my portrait of this Polish writer!
