Bolesław Prus
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Bolesław Prus (Hrubieszów, August 20, 1847 – May 19, 1912, Warsaw), whose actual name was Aleksander Głowacki, was a Polish journalist and novelist known especially for his novels The Doll and Pharaoh. The leading representative of realism in 19th-century Polish literature, Głowacki took the pen name "Prus" from the name of his family coat-of-arms.
An indelible mark was left on Prus by his experiences as a 15-year-old soldier in the Polish 1863 Uprising against Imperial Russia, in which he suffered severe injuries and imprisonment at Lublin by Russian authorities.
In 1872, at age 25, in Warsaw, Prus settled into a distinguished 40-year journalistic career. As a sideline, in an effort to appeal to Poles through their aesthetic sensibilities, he wrote short stories. Achieving success with these, he went on to employ a broader canvas; between 1886 and 1895, he completed four major novels on "great questions of our age."
Perennial favorites with his countrymen are The Doll and Pharaoh. The Doll describes the romantic infatuation of a man of action who is frustrated by the backwardness of his society. Pharaoh, Prus' only historical novel, is a study of political power, set in ancient Egypt at the fall of its 20th Dynasty and the New Kingdom.
