most folklorists of the day, to put into literary form the great wealth of fairy tales, fables, legends and other lore she had been gathering. Her response was the splendid collection entitled “National Fairy Tales and Legends” which was soon followed by her “Slovak Fairy Tales and Legends.” Her discussions and descriptions of the customs and manners of the groups she learned to know throughout Bohemia and North Hungary—chiefly in the Slovak districts—are of real ethnographical value.
Němcová’s first novels, “Obrázek Vesnický” (A Village Picture), “Dlouhá Noc” (The Long Night) and “Domácí Nemoc" (Home Sickness), belong to the same period (1846–1847), when she was but twenty-six. Her next novelettes, “Baruška” (Barbara) and “Sestry” (The Sisters), touch on social questions for which she suggests, unobtrusively, to be sure, a solution. A most ingenious plot with a pleasing and unusual romance characterizes her novel, “Karla” (Carla). In the same year, 1855, she wrote and published her masterpiece, “Babička.” In rapid succession came “Divá Bára” (Bewitched Bára); “Chýže Pod Horami” (The Cottage on the Mountainside), depicting the beautiful customs and fresh, unspoiled character of the Slovak mountaineers; “Pohorská Vesnice” (The Mountain Village), a story of the Bohemian Forest region; “Dobrý Člověk” (The Good Man); “Chudí Lidé” (Poor People) and “V Zámku a Podzámčí” (In the Castle and Below), which presents
