This article discusses the literary legacy of Artur Gruszecki (1852–1929). The author explains why some of his novels were forbidden by the Polish Communist authorities and put on the censorship list in 1951. Further, thearticle explains how, owing to the twentieth century ideologies, Gruszecki’s substantial writings remain vitually unknown to the contemporary reader in Poland.
The article discusses the biographical accounts and stories about Frédéric Chopin published in the most representative children’s magazines of the turn of the twentieth century: Wieczory Rodzinne (Family evenings), Przyjaciel Dzieci (Children’s friend) and Moje Pisemko (My little magazine). A kind of complementary role to them is played by the analysis of Janina Sedlaczkówna’s 1891 book Dwaj mistrze: opowiadanie o życiu Artura Grottgera i Fryderyka Chopina (Two maestros: a story about the lives of Artur Grottger and Frédéric Chopin) and Teresa Jadwiga Papi’s stories from 1898 of the same title Dwaj mistrze (Two maestros) about Chopin and Moniuszko. The collected comments and conclusions are presented in relation to twentieth- century biographical texts about Chopin.
The article discusses Kazimierz Lux’s travel entitled The description of the island of San-Domingo, which was published „Biblioteka Warszawska” in 1854 (v. 4, p. 197–223). It is a paraliterary notation of the stay of the „Polish pirate” in the Antilles, where, as a soldier of the French 114 th brigade formed by Napoleon, he suppressed the slave uprising. Lux’s text is a fairly detailed study of San-Domingo’s climatic, geographical and living conditions, plant crops and livestock; however, above all, it is a fascinating record of a Pole’s encounter from the early nineteenth century with the exoticism of the second hemisphere