About Bolesław Prus
Aleksander Głowacki (20 August 1847 – 19 May 1912), better known by his pen name Bolesław Prus (Polish: [bɔˈlεswaf ˈprus] ), was a Polish journalist, novelist, a leading figure in the history of Polish literature and philosophy, and a distinctive voice in world literature. Aged 15, Aleksander Głowacki joined the Polish 1863 Uprising against Imperial Russia. Shortly after his 16th birthday, he suffered severe battle injuries. Five months later, he was imprisoned. These early experiences may have precipitated the panic disorder and agoraphobia that dogged him through life, and shaped his opposition to seeking Poland's independence by force of arms. In 1872, in Warsaw, aged 25, he settled into a 40-year journalistic career that focused on science, technology, education, and economic and cultural development – societal enterprises essential to the perseverance of a people who in the 18th century had been partitioned out of political existence by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Głowacki took the pen name for his popular writings, "Prus", from the appellation of his family's coat-of-arms. As a sideline, he wrote short stories. Achieving success, he proceeded to a larger canvas: between 1884 and 1895, he completed four major novels: The Outpost, The Doll, The New Woman, and Pharaoh. The Doll depicts the romantic infatuation of a man of action who is frustrated by his country's backwardness. Pharaoh, his only historical novel, is a study of politics, set in ancient Egypt at the fall of its 20th Dynasty and New Kingdom. Prus enrolled at a Lublin gymnasium (secondary school), the still functioning prestigious Stanisław Staszic School, founded in 1586. Jan Sacewicz became one of Prus's major legatees and an engineer, and died in a German camp after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising of August–October 1944. It was only in 1888, when Prus was forty, that he wrote his first historical fiction, the stunning short story, "A Legend of Old Egypt." This story, a few years later, served as a preliminary sketch for his only historical novel, Pharaoh (1895).
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