BOŽENA NĚMCOVÁ
(Born February 5, 1820, in Vienna; died January 20, 1862, in Prague.)
The first of the realistic writers of Bohemia was Božena Němcová, who stands unqualifiedly foremost among the women authors of her nation. Němcová spent her childhood in the foothill region of Ratibořice on the Silesian border, where is laid the scene of her best-known and most-loved novel of country life, “Babička" (The Grandmother), which has gone into dozens of editions and has been translated into many different languages. Frances Gregor, author of “The Story of Bohemia,” made the English translation of this beautiful story, which Němcová admitted was a picture of her own life and that of her brothers and sisters under the sheltering love of one of the dearest and most typical characters in Czech literature—“the grandmother.” Not a trace of bitterness appears in the entire novel, though it was written when Němcová was experiencing nothing but hardship and sorrow in a most unhappy married life, and after death had removed her chief joy—her eldest son, Hynek. A bride at seventeen, Němcová, whose maiden name was
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