Bezcenne reymontiana
Priceless Reymontiana

Attorney Witold Kotowski’s Archive

Summary/Abstract: The first part of the paper refers to the history of an archive of a Łódź’s attorney Witold Kotowski (1899–1988), a collection of essential materials of Władysław Stanisław Reymont’s life and output, which, due to unfortunate history, has never been extensively explored. As based on the collated sources—mostly unique copies of letters—Kotowski wrote a monograph “Reymonta droga do Nobla” (“Reymont’s Way to the Nobel Prize”), which has never been published. After Kotowski’s death the documents became private property and it was only Barbara Kocówna who accessed it. Her research, however, was poor and often mistaken in several works published after the year 2000, with scanty information that she had used the resource. The second part of the paper contains the archive’s description. Currently, it is found in the Library of the University of Humanities and Economics in Łódź, but it makes up only a small part of the original assemblage. Though fragmentary, it nonetheless includes many priceless Reymontiana, especially never before published copies of Reymont’s letters and of the ones directed to him. Such documentation and its value, the advantage of which to this day has not been taken, is exemplified in Reymont’s correspondence with Zdzisław Dębicki

• Details
• Contents