Jerzy Żuławski

Jerzy Żuławski (Polish: [ˈjɛʐɨ ʐuˈwafski]; 14 July 1874 – 9 August 1915) was a Polish literary figure, philosopher, translator, alpinist and nationalist whose best-known work is the science-fiction epic, Trylogia Księżycowa (The Lunar Trilogy), written between 1901 and 1911.

In a twenty-year writing career, from his first book of poems in 1895, at the age of 21, to his final World War I dispatches in 1915, Jerzy Żuławski created an impressive body of work—seven volumes of poetry, three collections of literary criticism, numerous cultural and philosophical essays, ten plays and five novels. He was considered an important and influential intellectual figure in the early years of the 20th century, but a century later, the only creation which has remained in print and assured him literary immortality is The Lunar Trilogy. Stanisław Lem (1921–2006), renowned as the "most widely read science-fiction writer in the world", contributed an introduction to the 1956 and 1975 editions of the Trilogy's initial volume, Na Srebrnym Globie (On the Silver Globe), crediting Żuławski's words with inspiring him to become "a writer of the fantastic" and describing the time he spent reading The Lunar Trilogy as "one of the most fascinating and life-changing experiences" of his youth.

Jerzy Żuławski was born into a strongly nationalistic Polish household in the village of Lipowiec, near Rzeszów, a major city in the region of Galicia. In 1772 Galicia, with its capital Lwów, was separated from Poland in the First Partition and, for the next 146 years, became part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire. Eleven years before Jerzy's birth, his father Kazimerz Żuławski, a country squire, had participated in the 1863 January Uprising against Czarist rule in the Russian portion of partitioned Poland. Kazimierz had a great influence on young Jerzy's life and Jerzy shared many of the views his father expressed.

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