Letter of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski to Wincenty Pol

An autograph (manuscript) of a letter of June 19th, 1869, from Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812-1887) to Wincenty Pol (1807-1872). The letter was purchased for the Wincenty Pol Museum at the auction of the RARA AVIS Antiquarian Store in Krakow in 2001.

It is written on a sheet of letterhead paper of the Kraszewski Printing House, founded by the writer in Dresden in 1868. Kraszewski addresses Pol as: ‘Our dear, respected bard!’. The text is short, and to understand what it concerns, it is necessary to refer to the writer's earlier letter, dated June 9th of the same year. It concerns the edition of the Pol’s Year of the Hunter with illustrations by Juliusz Kossak (1824--1899). The poet’s Hunters’ Calendar (Kalendarz dla myśliwych) was printed serialised in 1866 in the Warsaw magazine Tygodnik Ilustrowany (vol. 13, no. 344–368). In 1869, Pol decided to publish the work in its entirety and on this matter he turned to Kraszewski and a Poznań bookseller and to publisher Jan Konstanty Żupański (1804-1883) as publishers. In June of the same year, a contract was signed, which Żupański sent to Kraszewski to Dresden together with an author’s fee for Pol amounting to one hundred thalers. Kraszewski, undertaking to print the illustrated Year of the Hunter, urged the poet in his letter: ‘Give me a correct and complete manuscript as soon as possible, because it will be printed at my place and I am waiting for the job with which I want to show off’. To avoid delays, the writer was prepared to cover the cost of rewriting the text.

The Year of the Hunter with twelve illustrations by Kossak – full-page woodcuts – printed in Dresden by Żupański, was published in 1870. It received a hard, linen binding with a gilded title in the mirror of the front face. Unfortunately, the blind author could not admire it.

In the 20th century, two reprints of the work were published: in 1957 (State Agricultural and Forest Publishing House in Warsaw – on the occasion of the 150th birthday of the poet) and in 2006 (Academic Publishing House of the W. Pol University of Social and Life Sciences in Lublin – on the 200th anniversary of Pol’s birthday).

Grażyna Połuszejko