Marianna Rychlowska
Two of the Polish titles on the Skomlin list carry introductions by Marianna Rychlowska, supplying the biographical and historical context that the first readers of Hoffmanowa and Reymont would have taken for granted. The introduction to The Comedienne also includes a history of the early Polish theatre.
Marianna Rychlowska wrote the introductions to two Polish titles issued by Skomlin Press: Klementyna Tanska Hoffmanowa's The Journal of Countess Francoise Krasinska and Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont's The Comedienne, the latter reprinting Edmund Obecny's 1920 translation. Her introduction to The Comedienne sets out Reymont's life, the historical setting of the novel, and the early history of the Polish theatre, supplying context the original audience would have taken for granted.
Titles at Skomlin
The journal of Françoise Krasinska begins with her as a young girl living comfortably with her parents at the court of Maleszów in southern Poland. She is happy and innocent, and nurses a crush on Prince Charles, pretender to the Polish throne. Beautiful and intelligent, she lived a life whose escapades and fate set tongues wagging in every court in Europe.
Reymont describes in a slow burning tragedy a young provincial Janina the comédienne of the title who joins a Warsaw theatre company and contends with what was then a very modern notion of personal freedom.