Father Franciszek Ksawery: Times and People, edited by Henryk Barycz. Wrocław: Ossoliński National Institute – Publishing House, 1959

Franciszek Ksawery Prek, Times and People, edited by Henryk Barycz.
Wrocław: Ossoliński National Institute – Publishing House, 1959.

• Author: Franciszek Ksawery Prek
• Title: Times and People
• Place and year of publication: Wrocław 1959
• Binding: original cardboard / softcover
• Format: 24 cm
• Volume: L, 576, [2] pp., [9] plates of illustrations
• Print run: 2,000 pieces

Franciszek Ksawery Prek – a Galician diarist, writer, and amateur painter, born in Nozdrzec on the San River. Despite his hearing impairment, he led a rich social and artistic life. He frequented the aristocratic courts of Galicia, including those of the Czartoryski and Potocki families. The greatest value of his body of work lies in the diaries he kept between 1818 and 1856, which serve as a valuable record of the social life and culture of old Galicia.

This book presents a selection of Franciszek Ksawery Prek’s diaries, describing the life of the landed gentry and the Galician aristocracy in the first half of the 19th century. The author presents the daily life of the manors, travel, social life, culture, political events, and the realities of the Podkarpacie region, Kraków, and Lviv. The memoirs are of great historical and cultural value, capturing the atmosphere of the era as seen through the eyes of a keen observer.