Bolesław Prus
1847–1912
Biography
Bolesław Prus was the pen name of Aleksander Głowacki, who was born on 20 August 1847 in Hrubieszów, in eastern Poland, and died in Warsaw on 19 May 1912. At fifteen he joined the 1863 uprising against Russian rule. He was badly wounded and then imprisoned, and these experiences may have contributed to the panic disorder that troubled him for the rest of his life. From 1872 he worked for some forty years as a journalist in Warsaw, writing on science, technology, education and the economy, which he saw as essential to a nation that had been denied its own state.
Prus is counted among the leading figures of Polish positivism and realism. Between 1884 and 1895 he completed four large novels: The Outpost, The Doll, The New Woman and Pharaoh. The Doll, the best known of them, follows a self-made Warsaw merchant who falls for an aristocratic woman, and it is a sharp picture of a society divided by class and by its own illusions. Pharaoh, his only historical novel, is set in ancient Egypt at the fall of the twentieth dynasty and is a study of politics and power.
Two of his works are on this site: Faraon, the historical novel, and Anielka, another of his works of fiction. Together they show a writer who worked as a journalist and as a novelist, and who used both to examine the society around him.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Anielka
by Bolesław Prus
Anielka is a girl growing up on a prosperous country estate, taught by her governess, while her little brother Józio plays beside their mother. Prus's early short novel follows the child through the seasons of the village and the first shadows that fall on her sheltered world.…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Faraon
by Bolesław Prus
The young prince Ramses, heir to the Egyptian throne in the eleventh century BC, wants to reform the kingdom and to break the power of the priests who hold the wealth and the secrets of the land. Prus's only historical novel follows his rise as Pharaoh and the slow trap of a…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Placówka
by Bolesław Prus
Ślimak, a Polish peasant, clings to his small farm while a German colonist, a landlord and a changing countryside lean on him to sell. Prus's short, plain novel of stubbornness and loss sets one family against the forces of the new age. This book uses the racial and other slurs…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.