Orzeszkowa, Eliza

Orzeszkowa, Eliza, b 6 June 1841 in Milkoushchizna, near Hrodna, Belarus, d 18 May 1910 in Hrodna. Polish writer and feminist. In her novels and stories she depicted the life of Belarusian peasants, the Polish gentry, and small-town Jews in western Belarus and of poor artisans and the intelligentsia in Warsaw. Her novels Niziny (Lowlands, 1885), Dziurdziowie (The Dziurdzes, 1888), and Cham (The Boor, 1888) dealt with the problems of the Ukrainian peasantry in western Polisia. She corresponded with Ivan Franko, and translated some of his, Taras Shevchenko’s, Marko Vovchok’s, and Mykhailo Starytsky’s works into Polish. Her feminist publicism influenced Nataliia Kobrynska and Uliana Kravchenko. Ukrainian translations of her selected works were published in 1930, 1950, 1952, 1956, and 1966.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]