Francis de Sales Lewental dating history

Details

Francis de Sales Lewental was a Polish Jewish publisher; born at Włocławek, Congress Poland, 1839; died at Wiesbaden on 24 September 1902. In 1862 Lewental, the son of poor Jewish parents, bought with his accumulated savings the press of the Warsaw publisher Jan Glücksberg [pl] (died 1859), and began his career with the Kalendarz Ludowy, a popular almanac, which he continued until 1866. In 1865, in conjunction with others, he founded Kłosy [pl], an illustrated weekly, which in the next year became his exclusive property. Under Lewental's management and under the editorship of Adam Plug [pl], Kłosy became the most widely circulated illustrated weekly in Poland, and contributed in no small measure to the popularizing of Polish art and to the development of Polish wood engraving. In 1871 Lewental bought the Kółko Domowe, a home magazine, and transformed it into the popular Tygodnik Romansów i Powieści (discontinued in 1900). Lewental was the proprietor also of the Świt, edited for a few years by Maria Konopnicka. In 1871, also, he issued an edition of the works of Korzeniowski (better-known in the English-speaking world as Joseph Conrad), which proved so popular that it led later to similar editions of the works of Kraszewski, Kremer, Rzewuski, Skarbek, Fredro, Syrokomla, Eliza Orzeszkowa, Kaczkowski, Bałucki, etc.