52 Facts About Henryk Sienkiewicz

Henryk Sienkiewicz is remembered for his historical novels, such as the Trilogy series and especially for his internationally known best-seller Quo Vadis.

Henryk Sienkiewicz 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".

Henryk Sienkiewicz's family were impoverished Polish nobles, on his father's side deriving from Tatars who had settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Henryk Sienkiewicz's parents were Jozef Sienkiewicz of the Oszyk coat of arms and Stefania Cieciszowska.

Henryk Sienkiewicz's mother descended from an old and affluent Podlachian family.

Henryk Sienkiewicz had five siblings: an older brother, Kazimierz, and four sisters: Aniela, Helena, Zofia and Maria.

Henryk Sienkiewicz's family were entitled to use the Polish Oszyk coat of arms.

Henryk Sienkiewicz's family moved several times, and young Henryk spent his childhood on family estates in Grabowce Gorne, Wezyczyn and Burzec.

Henryk Sienkiewicz received relatively poor school-grades except in the humanities, notably Polish language and history.

Henryk Sienkiewicz worked on his first novel to be published, Na marne.

Henryk Sienkiewicz completed extramural secondary-school classes, and in 1866 he received his secondary-school diploma.

Henryk Sienkiewicz 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 literature and Old Polish Language.

Henryk Sienkiewicz's situation improved somewhat in 1868 when he became a tutor to the princely Woroniecki family.

Henryk Sienkiewicz completed his university studies in 1871, though he failed to receive a diploma because he did not pass the examination in Greek language.

Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote for and Niwa, under the pen name "Litwos".

Henryk Sienkiewicz collaborated on a Polish translation, published in 1874, of Victor Hugo's last novel, Ninety-Three.

In 1874 Henryk Sienkiewicz was briefly engaged to Maria Keller, and traveled abroad to Brussels and Paris.

In 1876 Henryk Sienkiewicz went to the United States with Helena Modrzejewska and her husband.

Henryk Sienkiewicz traveled via London to New York and then on to San Francisco, staying for some time in California.

Henryk Sienkiewicz briefly lived in the town of Anaheim, later in Anaheim Landing.

Henryk Sienkiewicz hunted, visited Native American camps, traveled in the nearby mountains, and visited the Mojave Desert, Yosemite Valley, and the silver mines at Virginia City, Nevada.

On 24 March 1878 Henryk Sienkiewicz left the US for Europe.

Henryk Sienkiewicz 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.

In 1879 the first collected edition of Henryk Sienkiewicz's works was published, in four volumes; the series would continue until 1917, ending with a total of 17 volumes.

Henryk Sienkiewicz continued writing journalistic pieces, mainly in The Polish Gazette and Niwa.

Henryk Sienkiewicz 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.

Henryk Sienkiewicz began work on the historical novel,.

Henryk Sienkiewicz soon began writing the second volume of his Trilogy, Potop.

Henryk 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.

Just two weeks later his bride left him; Henryk Sienkiewicz blamed "in-law intrigues".

Henryk Sienkiewicz used his growing international fame to influence world opinion in favor of the Polish cause.

Henryk Sienkiewicz often criticized German policies of Germanization of the Polish minority in Germany; in 1901 he expressed support of Wrzesnia schoolchildren who were protesting the banning of the Polish language.

Henryk Sienkiewicz maintained some ties with Polish right-wing National Democracy politicians and was critical of the socialists, but he was generally a moderate and declined to become a politician and a deputy to the Russian Duma.

Henryk Sienkiewicz supported educational endeavors and co-founded the Polska Macierz Szkolna organization.

Henryk Sienkiewicz helped gather funds for social-welfare projects such as starvation relief, and for construction of a tuberculosis sanatorium at Zakopane.

Henryk Sienkiewicz was as prominent in philanthropy as in literature.

In 1900, with a three-year delay due to the approaching centenary of Mickiewicz's birth, Henryk Sienkiewicz celebrated his own quarter-century, begun in 1872, as a writer.

Henryk Sienkiewicz died on 15 November 1916, at the Grand Hotel du Lac in Vevey, Switzerland, where he was buried on 22 November.

Henryk Sienkiewicz's funeral was attended by representatives of both the Central Powers and the Entente, and an address by Pope Benedict XV was read.

In 1924, after Poland had regained her independence, Henryk Sienkiewicz's remains were repatriated to Warsaw, Poland, and placed in the crypt of St John's Cathedral.

Unlike most other Polish Positivist writers, Henryk Sienkiewicz was a conservative.

Henryk Sienkiewicz's "Latarnik" has been described as one of the best Polish short stories.

Henryk Sienkiewicz's Without dogma was a notable artistic experiment, a self-analytical novel written as a fictitious diary.

Henryk Sienkiewicz had expressed his opinions on naturalism and writing, generally, early on in "".

Henryk Sienkiewicz often carried out substantial historic research for his novels, but he was selective in the findings that made it into the novels.

About the turn of the 20th century, Henryk Sienkiewicz was the most popular writer in Poland, and one of the most popular in Germany, France, Russia, and the English-speaking world.

Henryk Sienkiewicz was inducted into many international organizations and societies, including the Polish Academy of Learning, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Royal Czech Society of Sciences, and the Italian Academy of Arcadia.

Henryk Sienkiewicz received the French Legion d'honneur, honorary doctorates from the Jagiellonian University and Lwow University, and honorary citizenship of Lwow.

Henryk Sienkiewicz has been featured on a number of postage stamps.

Outside Poland, Henryk Sienkiewicz's popularity declined beginning in the interbellum, except for Quo Vadis, which retained relative fame thanks to several film adaptations, including a notable American one in 1951.

Henryk Sienkiewicz has been the subject of a number of biographies.

Henryk Sienkiewicz's works have received criticism, in his lifetime and since, as being simplistic: a view expressed notably by the 20th-century Polish novelist and dramatist Witold Gombrowicz, who described Sienkiewicz as a "first-rate second-rate writer".