Martovych, Les

Martovych, Les [Martovyč, Les’], b 12 February 1871 in Torhovytsia, Horodenka county, Galicia, d 11 January 1916 in Poharysko, Rava-Ruska county, Galicia. (Photo: Les Martovych.) Writer, lawyer, and community activist. He completed his legal studies by correspondence at Lviv University in 1909 and worked as a clerk and legal assistant in various Galician towns. From 1898 he lived in Lviv and edited the radical (see Radicalism) newspaper Hromads’kyi holos. His first published work appeared in 1889, a story entitled ‘Nechytal'nyk’ (The Illiterate). He later published collections of stories, including Nechytal’nyk (1900), Khytryi Pan’ko (Clever Panko, 1903), Strybozhyi darunok (Gift from Stryboh, 1905), and the novellette Zabobon (Superstition, 1917). He depicted the daily life of the Galician peasantry and small-town intelligentsia, particularly that of priests and teachers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He wrote in the realist style, with touches of impressionism and with occasional sharp satire directed at the rural bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy. He contributed to Dilo and other newspapers and journals. His works were translated many times, and a three-volume compilation of his works, edited by Yu. Hamorak, was published in 1943. Other editions of selected works have appeared in Ukraine since 1949.