Henryk Sienkiewicz
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Henryk Sienkiewicz (May 5, 1846, Wola Okrzejska, Congress Poland, - November 15, 1916, Vevey, Switzerland) was a Polish novelist and publicist. One of the most popular Polish writers at the turn of 19th and 20th century, best known for his novel In Desert and Wilderness.
Born into a wealthy family in Wola Okrzejska, in Russian-ruled Poland, Sienkiewicz wrote historical novels set during the Rzeczpospolita (Polish Republic, or Commonwealth). His works were noted for their negative portrayal of the Teutonic Order in The Teutonic Knights (Krzyżacy), which was remarkable as a significant portion of his readership lived under German rule. Many of his novels were first serialized in newspapers, and even today are still in print. In Poland, he is best known for his historical novels (The Trilogy) set during the 17th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and elsewhere he is known for Quo Vadis, set in Nero's Rome. Quo Vadis has been filmed several times, most notably the 1951 version.
Sienkiewicz was meticulous in preserving the authenticity of historical language. In the trilogy, for instance, he had his characters use Polish language as it was spoken in seventeenth century. In Krzyżacy, which relates to the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, he even had his characters speak a variety of medieval Polish which he recreated by utilizing many of the archaic expressions then still common among the highlanders of Podhale.
Sienkiewicz married Maria Szetkiewicz (1854 - 1885) in 1881 and they had two children, Henryk (1882 - 1959) and Jadwiga.
