Adam Mickiewicz: the life of a romantic

ENAdam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Poland's national poet, was one of the extraordinary personalities of the age. In chronicling the events of his life - his travels, numerous loves, a troubled marriage, years spent as a member of a heterodox religious sect, and friendships with such luminaries of the time as Aleksandr Pushkin, James Fenimore Cooper, George Sand, Giuseppe Mazzini, Margaret Fuller, and Aleksandr Herzen - Roman Koropeckyj draws a portrait of the Polish poet as a quintessential European Romantic. This richly illustrated biography - the first scholarly biography of the poet to be published in English since 1911 - draws extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the poet's literary texts to make sense of a life as sublime as it was tragic. It concludes with a description of the solemn transfer of Mickiewicz's remains in 1890 from Paris to Cracow, where he was interred in the Royal Cathedral alongside Poland's kings and military heroes.