Klementyna Hoffmanowa, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Klementyna Hoffmanowa

Polish prose writer, popularizer, translator, editor, one of the first Polish writers for children

Date of Birth: 23-Nov-1798

Place of Birth: Warsaw, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland

Date of Death: 21-Sep-1845

Profession: writer, translator, children's writer

Nationality: Poland

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius


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About Klementyna Hoffmanowa

  • Klementyna Hoffmanowa, born Klementyna Tanska (23 November 1798 – 21 September 1845) was a Polish novelist, translator, teacher and activist.
  • She considered herself primarily a writer, and was the first woman in Poland to support herself from writing and teaching, as well as one of Poland's first writers of children's literature.She made her debut in 1819 with a moralizing treatise A Souvenir After a Good Mother.
  • In 1820s, she edited a popular magazine for children and published several children books, that have won a wide audience over several generations.
  • She published a number of novels, including The Letters of Elzbieta Rzeczycka to her friend Urszula (1824) and The Diary of Countess Francoise Krasinska (1825), the latter being Hoffmanowa's best known work, translated into several languages, and described as one of the first Polish psychological novels.Hoffmanowa raised the postulate of economic self-empowerment of women.
  • She believed that the first step for women to achieve independence should be getting an education and preparing for paid work.
  • However, she held conservative views on the role of women, and referred to national and Catholic values. In 1826, her candidacy for membership in the Warsaw Society of Friends of Learning was submitted, but she was not accepted as a woman.
  • She remained unmarried until the age of thirty, long by the standards of her time for a woman, and only in 1829 she married Karol Boromeusz Hoffman.
  • Until then she used her maiden name. Though writing was her main and most preferred activity, she also worked as a teacher, at the time called the inspector and visitator of female schools, and lecturer in moral science at the Governess' Institute in Warsaw (1826–1831).
  • She educated a number of young women, some of whom in later years became writers and teachers themselves.
  • Hoffmanowa was mentioned with respect and appreciation by some of her students.
  • In turn, her pupil Narcyza Zmichowska criticized Hoffmanowa's conservatism. During the Poland's November Uprising against the Russian Empire, Hoffmanowa was a co-creator and chairman of the Union of Patriotic Charity of the Varsovians and carried the help to the wounded soldiers.
  • After the fall of the uprising in 1831, she and her husband fled to Paris, where their house became the meeting place of the Polish political refugees.
  • In Paris, Hoffmanowa was active in the Charity Association of Polish Ladies and the Literary Society, and was called "the Mother of the Great Emigration”.
  • She was friends with Chopin and Mickiewicz. She died of breast cancer at the age of 46 and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

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