Mihail Sadoveanu withdrew from politics in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as Romania came to be led by successive right-wing dictatorships, he offered a measure of support to King Carol II and his National Renaissance Front, which attempted to block the more radically fascist Iron Guard from power. He was personally appointed a member of the reduced corporatist Senate by Carol. In 1940, the official establishment Editura Fundațiilor Regale published the first volume of his "Opere" ("Works"). Sadoveanu kept a low profile under the Iron Guard's Nazi-allied National Legionary regime. After "Conducător" Ion Antonescu overthrew the Guard during the Legionary Rebellion and established his own fascist regime, the still-apolitical Sadoveanu was more present in public life, and lectured on cultural subjects for the Romanian Radio. After publishing the final section of his "Frații Jderi" in 1942, Sadoveanu again retreated to the countryside, in his beloved Arieș area, where he had built himself a chalet and a church; this seclusion produced his "Povestirile de la Bradu-Strâmb" ("Bradu-Strâmb Stories"). During those years, the sixty-year-old writer met Valeria Mitru, a much younger feminist journalist, whom he married after a brief courtship.