ALOIS JIRÁSEK
(Born August 23, 1851, in Hronov.)
Alois Jirásek was born of a family of small farmers and weavers of modest means. In his native district near Náchod, the bloodiest scenes of the Prussian war of 1866 took place and on young Jirásek that period of his country’s history left an ineffaceable effect. The wars in which his people fell, from earliest times to his own day, whether in a cause they themselves upheld or to gain the selfish ends of the monarch who controlled the man power of the nation, form the basis of most of his elaborate historical novels as well as of many of his shorter tales.
While an instructor in the college at Litomyšl, where he remained some eighteen years, he gathered further material for novels whose background shows his intimate knowledge of the history and traditions of that locality rich in the lore he sought. His student novels “Filosofská Historie” (A Philosopher’s Story) on which he later based his drama “M. D. Rettigová,” together with all the stories included in his “Maloměstské Historie” (Small Town Stories), his three-part novel “F. L. Věk” concerned with the torchbearers of literary, linguistic and political progress, his drama
221
