Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (28 July 1812 – 19 March 1887) was a Polish novelist, journalist, historian, publisher, painter, and musician.
Born in Warsaw into a noble family, he spent much of his youth with his maternal grandparents in Romanów and completed his education in various cities, including Vilnius. Kraszewski's literary career began in 1830, and he became an influential writer and journalist. Despite facing political challenges and imprisonment for his involvement in the November Uprising, he continued to support Polish independence. He spent his later years in Dresden, where he remained active in political and literary circles until his death in Geneva.
Kraszewski wrote over 200 novels and several hundred novellas, short stories, and art reviews, making him the most prolific writer in the history of Polish literature and one of the most prolific in world literature.<!-- source? --> He is best known for his historical novels, including an epic series on the history of Poland, comprising twenty-nine historical novels; and for novels about peasant life, critical of feudalism and serfdom. His works have been described as liberal-democratic but not radical, and as proto-Positivist.
Life
Early life
thumb|left|upright=1.0|[[Romanów, Gmina Sosnówka|Romanów manor where Kraszewski grew up, now a Kraszewski Museum]]
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski was born in Warsaw on 28 July 1812 to a family of Polish nobility (szlachta) bearing the Jastrzębiec coat of arms. He was the oldest son of and and had four siblings, including artist Lucjan Kraszewski and writer Kajetan Kraszewski.
Beginning in 1829, he studied medicine at University of Vilnius; soon after, he transferred to the Faculty of Literature and Fine Arts. His most significant trip occurred in 1858, when he travelled to Western Europe, visiting Austria, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and France. In Italy he was received by Pope Pius IX, who admonished him for his alleged liberal bias. This, however, likely heightened Kraszewski's critical view of the Holy State. His travels in the West also made him impatient with the feudal relations – particularly, serfdom – in eastern Poland. Kraszewski's political stance was fairly moderate; while supporting the cause of Polish independence, he saw armed struggle as premature, and initially supported conciliatory negotiations with Russian authorities represented by Aleksander Wielopolski.
As tensions grew, Kraszewski found it increasingly difficult to remain moderate, and started to increasingly criticize the Russian authorities. For his criticism of censorship in December 1862, the Russian authorities forced him to resign his editorship of ' and ordered him to leave Congress Poland. Following the eruption of the January 1863 Uprising, on 3 February 1863 he fled Warsaw. works, including 223 novels, 20 dramas and many short stories. and one of the first Polish writers whose works were widely translated (several dozens of his works were translated into Russian, Czech, German, and French; about a dozen, to Serbo-Croatian; several, to English, Italian, Lithuanian and to various Scandinavian languages).
Czesław Miłosz, 1980 Nobel laureate Polish poet, in his The History of Polish Literature (1969) described him as best exemplifying the genre of historical novel in Polish literature. Sfinks (Sphinx, 1842), Pamiętniki nieznajomego (Diaries of the Unknown, 1846), and Powieść bez tytułu (Novel without a Title, 1855). Some of those works are partly autobiographical.
In addition to his literary work, he was a contributor to many newspapers, journals and magazines, where he published works of fiction as well as reviews and articles on topics such as art, music and morality, and later, contemporary politics. From 1836 to 1849 he was a contributor to the ' (St. Petersburg Weekly). Others were critical of Russia; in particular his Rachunki Bolesławity (Bolesławita's accounts,1867) portrayed Russia as a primitive, barbaric country. He also criticized Russian ideology of panslavism, aiming at unifying all Slavic lands, and supported self-determination for Belorussians and Ukrainians. In 2003, Stara Baśń was adapted to the movie An Ancient Tale: When the Sun Was a God, directed by Jerzy Hoffman.
Monuments to Kraszewski exist in Biała Podlaska () and Krynica-Zdrój (); many other places feature memorial plaques dedicated to him.