Henryk Sienkiewicz
1846–1916
Biography
Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) was a Polish novelist and journalist who sometimes signed his work with the pseudonym Litwos. He was born in the Kingdom of Poland, then under Russian imperial rule, into a family of limited means. He began publishing in the late 1860s, and letters he wrote during a stay in America in the late 1870s brought him a large audience back home. His serialised novels of the 1880s made him a favourite with Polish readers, and his books spread through translation. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905 and died in Switzerland in 1916.
Sienkiewicz is best known for his historical fiction. His Trilogy, made up of With Fire and Sword, The Deluge and Pan Michael, is set in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth of the seventeenth century, a time of war and rebellion. Quo Vadis, set in the Rome of Nero, became his most famous book abroad, and it has been filmed several times, most famously in Hollywood in 1951. For readers in a country without independence throughout his lifetime, the Trilogy and his other historical books offered a sense of national history and of dignity.
Several of his works are in this library, in translations credited to Jeremiah Curtin and Maila Talvio: Bartek Zwycięzca (Bartek the Victor), Hania and Na polu chwały. Hania is an early novella and Bartek Zwycięzca a shorter work of the 1880s, while Na polu chwały comes from his later years. Together they show a writer who began with shorter fiction and went on to the broad historical canvases that made his name abroad.
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Books
Bartek Zwycięzca
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Bartek Słowik, a slow, good-natured Polish peasant from the Prussian-ruled Poznań region, is drafted in 1870 and, to his own surprise, becomes a hero at Gravelotte. Sienkiewicz tells what the Iron Cross does to him in the village and in the army that holds him. This book uses…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Hania
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Henryk, the narrator, loves Hania, a girl he has known since childhood, in a manor in the Polish east where a Tatar neighbour, Selim Mirza, also comes into their lives. Sienkiewicz's novella of 1876, a tale of unfulfilled love, belongs with his 'little trilogy'.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Na polu chwały
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
A historical novel of the seventeenth-century Polish gentry, which opens on a frozen night as a laden sleigh with an armed escort crosses a wolf-haunted forest road. Sienkiewicz, in a book of 1906, leads his people from the manors of the borderland to the wars of the…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Ogniem i mieczem
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
In 1647 the Polish knight Jan Skrzetuski loves Helena Kurcewiczówna, and Bohun, a Zaporozhian Cossack, loves her too; the rivalry opens the great Cossack uprising of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. The first book of Sienkiewicz's Trilogy follows the sieges, charges and betrayals of the war…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Pan Wołodyjowski
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Michał Wołodyjowski, the small and peerless swordsman of the borderland, hopes for a quiet marriage after years of war, but a young widow, a rival and a new invasion from the Turks make it hard to find peace. The last book of the Trilogy brings the three friends of the earlier…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Potop
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Andrzej Kmicic, a reckless young colonel with a taste for brawls, falls in love with Oleńka Billewiczówna and then, by his own blunders, falls into the service of a traitor as Sweden overruns Poland in 1655. The second book of the Trilogy turns him from a rogue into a defender…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Quo vadis
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Marcus Vinicius, a young patrician returned to Rome, falls in love with Lygia, a hostage princess who has been raised among the Christians, and sets out to win her. Sienkiewicz sets their pursuit against the court of Nero, the burning of Rome and the persecution that follows.…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero
by Henryk Sienkiewicz (translated by Jeremiah Curtin)
Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero (Quo vadis: Powieść z czasów Nerona) is a historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz in Polish. The novel tells the story of a romantic love that develops between Lygia (Ligia in Polish), a Christian woman and barbarian hostage, and…
Summary from Wikipedia: Quo Vadis (novel) (CC BY-SA 4.0)Qvo vadis: Kertomus Neron ajoilta
by Henryk Sienkiewicz (translated by Maila Talvio)
In Nero's Rome the young officer Marcus Vinicius falls for Lygia, a hostage princess raised in a Christian household, and his uncle Petronius, the arbiter of elegance, schemes to win her for him. Their story runs through the burning of Rome and the persecution of the Christians…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.Rodzina Połanieckich
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Stanisław Połaniecki, a Warsaw businessman who came home from abroad as a young man, looks for a wife and a settled life, and marries the gentle Marynia, the daughter of an old family. Sienkiewicz's novel of 1894 follows the household through quarrels, money and the old and new…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.The Knights of the Cross, or, Krzyzacy: Historical Romance
by Henryk Sienkiewicz (translated by Samuel Augustus Binion)
In late-fourteenth-century Poland, young Zbyszko swears a knight's oath to win the hand of Danusia and runs up against the Teutonic Order. Henryk Sienkiewicz's long historical romance leads from forest feuds to the great battle of Grunwald.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.W pustyni i w puszczy
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Staś Tarkowski, fourteen, and Nel Rawlison, eight, are seized in Egypt by the followers of the Mahdi and escape into the African interior with a faithful boy servant. Sienkiewicz's story of their long journey among lions, elephants and tribes has been a favourite of Polish…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.