Henryk Sienkiewicz place of birth Wola Okrzejska
Life
Early life
Sienkiewicz was born on 5 May 1846 in Wola Okrzejska, now a village in the central part of the eastern Polish region of Lubelskie, then part of the Russian Empire. His family were impoverished Polish nobles, on his father's side deriving from Tatars who had settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His parents were Józef Sienkiewicz (1813–96) of the Oszyk coat of arms and Stefania Cieciszowska (1820–73). His mother descended from an old and affluent Podlachian family. He had five siblings: an older brother, Kazimierz (who died during January Uprising of 1863-1864), and four sisters: Aniela, Helena, Zofia and Maria. His family were entitled to use the Polish Oszyk coat of arms. Wola Okrzejska belonged to the writer's maternal grandmother, Felicjana Cieciszowska. His family moved several times, and young Henryk spent his childhood on family estates in Grabowce Górne, Wężyczyn and Burzec. In September 1858 he began his education in Warsaw, where the family would finally settle in 1861, having bought a tenement house (kamienica) in eastern Warsaw's Praga district. He received relatively poor school-grades except in the humanities, notably Polish language and history.There are three museums dedicated to him in Poland. The first, the Henryk Sienkiewicz Museum in Oblęgorek (his residence), opened in 1958. The second, founded in 1966, is in his birthplace:  the Henryk Sienkiewicz Museum in Wola Okrzejska. The third opened in 1978 at Poznań.In Rome (Italy), in the small church of "Domine Quo Vadis", there is a bronze bust of Henryk Sienkiewicz. It is said that Sienkiewicz was inspired to write his novel Quo Vadis while sitting in this church.
Outside Poland, Sienkiewicz's popularity declined beginning in the interbellum, except for Quo Vadis, which retained relative fame thanks to several film adaptations, including a notable American one in 1951. In Poland his works are still widely read; he is seen as a classic author, and his works are often required reading in schools. They have also been adapted for Polish films and television series.The first critical analyses of his works were published in his lifetime. He has been the subject of a number of biographies. His works have received criticism, in his lifetime and since, as being simplistic: a view expressed notably by the 20th-century Polish novelist and dramatist Witold Gombrowicz, who described Sienkiewicz as a "first-rate second-rate writer". Vasily Rozanov described Quo Vadis as "not a work of art", but a "crude factory-made oleograph", while Anton Chekhov called Sienkiewicz's writing "sickeningly cloying and clumsy". Nonetheless, the Polish historian of literature Henryk Markiewicz, writing the Polski słownik biograficzny (Polish Biographical Dictionary) entry on Sienkiewicz (1997), describes him as a master of Polish prose, as the foremost Polish writer of historical fiction, and as Poland's internationally best-known writer.
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