Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz ( ; ; 5 May 1846 – 15 November 1916), also known by the pseudonym Litwos (), was a Polish epic writer. He is remembered for his historical novels, such as the Trilogy series and especially for his internationally known best-seller Quo Vadis (1895–1896).
Born into an impoverished Polish noble family in the Kingdom of Poland, at the time part of the Russian Empire, he began publishing journalistic and literary pieces in the late 1860s. In the late 1870s he traveled to the United States, sending back travel essays that won him popularity with Polish readers. In the 1880s he began serializing novels that further increased his popularity. He soon became one of the most popular Polish writers of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and numerous translations gained him international renown, culminating in his receipt of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "outstanding merits as an epic writer".
Many of his novels remain in print. In Poland he is known for his "Trilogy" of historical novels—With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Sir Michael—set in the 17th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; internationally he is known for Quo Vadis, set in Nero's Rome. The Trilogy and Quo Vadis have been filmed, the latter several times, with Hollywood's 1951 version receiving the most international recognition.
Life Early life Sienkiewicz came into the world on 5 May 1846 in Wola Okrzejska, Lublin Governorate, now a village in the central part of the eastern Polish region of Lubelskie in the Kingdom of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. His family were impoverished Polish nobles, on his father's side deriving from Lipka Tatars who had settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His parents were Józef Sienkiewicz of the Oszyk coat of arms and Stefania Cieciszowska. His mother descended from an old and affluent Podlachian family. He had five siblings: an older brother, Kazimierz (who died during January Uprising of 1863–1864), and four sisters: Aniela, Helena, Zofia and Maria. His family were entitled to use the Polish Oszyk coat of arms. Wola Okrzejska belonged to the writer's maternal grandmother, Felicjana Cieciszowska. His family moved several times, and young Henryk spent his childhood on family estates in Grabowce Górne, Wężyczyn, and Burzec. In September 1858 he began his education in Warsaw, where the family would finally settle in 1861, having bought a tenement house (kamienica) in eastern Warsaw's Praga district. He received relatively poor school-grades except in the humanities, notably Polish language and history.
Due to hard times, the 19-year-old Sienkiewicz took a job as private tutor to the Weyher family in Płońsk. It was probably in this period that he wrote his first novel, ("Sacrifice"); he is thought to have destroyed the manuscript of the never-published novel. He also worked on his first novel to be published, ("In Vain"). He completed extramural secondary-school classes, and in 1866 he received his secondary-school diploma. He first tried to study medicine, then law, at the Imperial University of Warsaw, but he soon transferred to the university's Institute of Philology and History, where he acquired a thorough knowledge of Ancient Greek and Latin literature and Old Polish language. Little is known about this period of his life, other than that he moved out of his parents' home, tutored part-time, and lived in poverty. His situation improved somewhat in 1868 when he became a private tutor to the princely Woroniecki family.
In 1867 he wrote a rhymed piece, "" ("Idyll of Youth"), which was rejected by Tygodnik Illustrowany ("The Illustrated Weekly"). In 1869 he debuted as a journalist; (1866–1904) ("The Weekly Review") ran his review of a play on 18 April 1869, and shortly afterward The Illustrated Weekly printed an essay of his about the late-Renaissance Polish poet Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński. He completed his university studies in 1871, though he failed to receive a diploma because he did not pass the examination in Ancient Greek language. Sienkiewicz also wrote for ("The Polish Gazette") and ("Magazine"), under the pen name "Litwos". In 1873 he began writing a column, "" ("Without a title"), in The Polish Gazette; in 1874 a second column, "" ("Current matters"), for Niwa; and in 1875 the third column, "" ("The present moment"). He also collaborated on a Polish translation of Victor Hugo's last novel, Ninety-Three, published in 1874. In June of that same year he became co-owner of Niwa (in 1878, he would sell his share in the magazine).
Meanwhile, in 1872, he had debuted as a fiction writer with his short novel ("In Vain"), published in the magazine ("Garland"). This was followed by ("Humorous Sketches from Woroszyłła's Files", 1872), ("The Old Servant", 1875), Hania ("Sienkiewicz") (1876), and (1877). The last three are known as the "Little Trilogy". These publications made him a prominent figure in Warsaw's journalistic-literary world, and a guest at popular dinner parties hosted by the actress Helena Modrzejewska.
Travels abroad
In 1874, Sienkiewicz was briefly engaged to Maria Keller, and traveled abroad to Brussels and Paris. Soon after he returned, his fiancée's parents cancelled the engagement. In 1876 Sienkiewicz went to the United States with Helena Modrzejewska (soon to become famous in the U.S. as actress Helena Modjeska) and her husband. He traveled via London to New York and then on to San Francisco, staying for some time in California. His travels were financed by ("The Polish Gazette") in exchange for a series of travel essays: Sienkiewicz wrote ("Letters from a Journey") and ("Litwos' Letters from a Journey"), which were published in The Polish Gazette in 1876–1878 and republished as a book in 1880. Other articles by him also appeared in (The Weekly Review) and (The Learned and Literary Guide), discussing the situation of American Polonia. He briefly lived in the town of Anaheim, later in Anaheim Landing (now Seal Beach, California). He hunted, visited Native American camps, traveled in the nearby mountains (the Santa Ana, Sierra Madre, San Jacinto, and San Bernardino Mountains), and visited the Mojave Desert, Yosemite Valley, and the silver mines at Virginia City, Nevada. On 20 August 1877 he witnessed Modjeska's U.S. theatrical debut at San Francisco's California Theatre, which he reviewed for The Polish Gazette; and on 8 September he published in the Daily Evening Post an article, translated into English for him by Modjeska, on "Poland and Russia".
In America, he also continued writing fiction, in 1877 publishing (Charcoal Sketches) in The Polish Gazette. He wrote a play, , soon retitled (On a Single Card), later staged at Lviv (1879) and, to better reception, at Warsaw (1881). He also wrote a play for Modjeska, aimed at an American public, (Partisan Struggles), but it was never performed or published, and the manuscript appears to be lost.
On 24 March 1878 Sienkiewicz left the U.S. for Europe. He first stayed in London, then for a year in Paris, delaying his return to Poland due to rumors of possible conscription into the Imperial Russian Army on the eve of a predicted new war with Turkey.
Return to Poland
In April 1879 Sienkiewicz returned to Polish soil. In Lwów he gave a lecture that was not well attended: "" ("From New York to California"). Subsequent lectures in Szczawnica and Krynica in July–August that year, and in Warsaw and Poznań the following year, were much more successful. In late summer 1879 he went to Venice and Rome, which he toured for the next few weeks, on 7 November 1879 returning to Warsaw. There he met Maria Szetkiewicz, whom he married on 18 August 1881. The marriage was reportedly a happy one. The couple had two children, Henryk Józef (1882–1959) and Jadwiga Maria (1883–1969). It was a short-lived marriage, however, because on 18 August 1885 Maria died of tuberculosis.
In 1879 the first collected edition of Sienkiewicz's works was published, in four volumes; the series would continue until 1917, ending with a total of 17 volumes. He also continued writing journalistic pieces, mainly in The Polish Gazette and Niwa. In 1881 he published a favorable review of the first collected edition of works by Bolesław Prus.
In 1880 Sienkiewicz wrote a historical novella, (Tartar Captivity). In late 1881 he became editor-in-chief of a new Warsaw newspaper, Słowo (The Word). This substantially improved his finances. The year 1882 saw him heavily engaged in the running of the newspaper, in which he published a number of columns and short stories. Soon, however, he lost interest in the journalistic aspect and decided to focus more on his literary work. He paid less and less attention to his post of editor-in-chief, resigning it in 1887 but remaining editor of the paper's literary section until 1892.
From 1883 he increasingly shifted his focus from short pieces to historical novels. He began work on the historical novel, (With Fire and Sword). Initially titled (The Wolf's Lair), it appeared in serial installments in The Word from May 1883 to March 1884. It also ran concurrently in the Kraków newspaper, (Time).
Sienkiewicz soon began writing the second volume of his Trilogy, Potop (The Deluge). It ran in The Word from December 1884 to September 1886. Beginning in 1884, Sienkiewicz accompanied his wife Maria to foreign sanatoriums. After her death, he kept on traveling Europe, leaving his children with his late wife's parents though he often returned to Poland, particularly staying for long periods in Warsaw and Kraków beginning in the 1890s. After his return to Warsaw in 1887, the third volume of his Trilogy appeared – Pan Wołodyjowski (Sir Michael) – running in The Word from May 1887 to May 1888. The Trilogy established Sienkiewicz as the most popular contemporary Polish writer.
Sienkiewicz received 15,000 rubles, in recognition of his achievements, from an unknown admirer who signed himself "Michał Wołodyjowski" after the Trilogy character. Sienkiewicz used the money to set up a fund, named for his wife and supervised by the Academy of Learning, to aid artists endangered by tuberculosis.
In 1886, he visited Constantinople; in 1888, Spain. At the end of 1890 he went to Africa, resulting in (Letters from Africa, published in The Word in 1891–92, then collected as a book in 1893). The turn of the 1880s and 1890s was associated with intensive work on several novels. In 1891 his novel Without dogma (Bez Dogmatu), previously serialized in 1889–90 in The Word, was published in book form. In 1892 Sienkiewicz signed an agreement for another novel, Rodzina Połanieckich (Children of the Soil), which was serialized in The Polish Gazette from 1893 and came out in book form in 1894.
Later years Sienkiewicz had several romances, and in 1892 Maria Romanowska-Wołodkowicz, stepdaughter of a wealthy Odessan, entered his life. He and Romanowska became engaged there in 1893 and married in Kraków on 11 November. Just two weeks later, however, his bride left him; Sienkiewicz blamed "in-law intrigues". On 13 December 1895 he obtained papal consent to dissolution of the marriage. In 1904 he married his niece, Maria Babska.