Maria Konopnicka

Life

Konopnicka was born in Suwałki on 23 May 1842. Her father, Józef Wasiłowski, was a lawyer. She was home-schooled and spent a year (1855–56) at a convent pension of the Sisters of Eucharistic Adoration in Warsaw (Zespół klasztorny sakramentek w Warszawie).

She made her debut as a writer in 1870 with the poem, "W zimowy poranek" ("On a Winter's Morn"). She gained popularity after the 1876 publication of her poem, "W górach" ("In the Mountains"), which was praised by future Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz.

In 1862 she married Jarosław Konopnicki. They had six children. The marriage was not a happy one as her husband disapproved of her writing career. In a letter to a friend, she described herself as "having no family" and as being "a bird locked in a cage". Eventually in 1878, in an unofficial separation, she left her husband and moved to Warsaw to pursue writing. She took her children with her. She would often travel in Europe; her first major trip was to Italy in 1883. She spent the years 1890–1903 living abroad in Europe.

Her life has been described as "turbulent", including extramarital romances, deaths, and mental illnesses in the family. She was a friend of a Polish woman poet of the Positivist period, Eliza Orzeszkowa, and of the painter and activist Maria Dulębianka.

In addition to being an active writer, she was also a social activist, organizing and participating in protests against the repression of ethnic (primarily Polish) and religious minorities in Prussia. She was also involved in women's-rights activism.

Her literary work in the 1880s gained wide recognition in Poland. In 1884 she began writing children's literature, and in 1888 she debuted as an adult-prose writer with

Cztery nowele (Four Short Stories). Due to the growing popularity of her writings, in 1902 a number of Polish activists decided to reward her by buying her a manor house. It was purchased with funds collected by a number of organizations and activists. As Poland was not an independent country at the time, and as her writings were politically uncongenial to the Prussian and Russian authorities, a location was chosen in the more tolerant Austrian partition of pre-Partition Poland. In 1903 she received a manor in Żarnowiec, where she arrived on 8 September. She would spend most springs and summers there, but she would still travel about Europe in fall and winter.

She died in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) on 8 October 1910. She was buried there in the Łyczakowski Cemetery. As per her wish Dulębianka was laid to rest next to her.