BOKSZCZANIN Maria

Born on 3 July 1926 in Torun; daughter of the Polish army officer Jan Bokszczanin (imprisoned in Starobielsk and murdered in Kharkiv in 1940) and the gardening engineer Zofia, née Wojciechowska. In 1939, she completed her primary education at the school of the Benedictine sisters' convention in Przemyśl. She continued her education during the Second World War in the secret lessons offered at the Blessed Kinga Secondary School in Kielce. She completed advanced secondary education in June 1945. She then took a degree in Polish philology at the University of Warsaw (UW). She became a member of the Adam Mickiewicz Literary Society (Towarzystwo Literackie im. A. Mickiewicza) in 1946, becoming a long-serving member and acting as the treasurer of the society's General Board for several terms. In 1949/50 she worked under Prof. Julian Krzyżanowski at the philological office of the Warsaw Scientific Society (TNW – Towarzystwo Naukowe Warszawskie), the “Korbutianum” or Gabinet Filologiczny im. G. Korbuta to give it its full name. In 1950, she was awarded a master's degree for her study dissertation „Faraon” Bolesława Prusa w krytyce (Bolesław Prus' "Pharaoh" in literary criticism), which was supervised by Prof. Wacław Borowy. She then worked at the Centre for Folklore at the Institute for Literary Studies (Pracownia Folkloru Instytutu Badań Literackich) until 1953. Her research initially focused on folk songs, particularly Christmas carols. In 1952 she translated an article (Mickiewicz na Węgrzech – Mickiewicz in Hungary) by the Hungarian philologist S. Kozocs from the French, which appeared in "Pamiętnik Literacki" (vol. 40). She made her debut as an editor in 1953, writing the notes on E. Orzeszkowa's novel Meir Ezofowicz. Between 1953 and 1968 she worked at the Old Polish Editorial Office at the publishing house Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, which later became the Editorial Office for the History of Culture. In her time there, she created the notes for publications including the five-volume Antologia dramatów staropolskich (Anthology of Old Polish Dramas). In 1968 she published her first article in literary history, Kantyczka Chybińskiego. (Z tradycji biblijnych i literackich kolędy barokowej) (Chybiński's "Kantyczka" [Canticle]: On the Biblical and literary traditions of Baroque carols), which appeared in the edited volume Literatura, komparatystyka, folklor (Literature, comparative studies and folklore). She returned to IBL PAN in 1969, where she started work on a full critical edition of Henryk Sienkiewicz's correspondence (vol. 1-5 [14 books], published 1977-2009). Her search for letters sent to various addressees took her to many places in Poland and abroad, including Rome (1966), Florence (1967), Vilnius (1970), Leningrad (1970), Moscow (1970), Lviv (1970), Vevey (1986), Chicago (1992), London (1994), Oxford (1994), Henley-on-Thames (1994), Boston (1996) and Paris (2000). Although she retired in 1987, she continued to collaborate with IBL. She was awarded a doctoral degree by IBL PAN in 1989 for her editorial work on Sienkiewicz's letters to Jadwiga and Edward Janczewski. Her supervisor was Prof. Edmund Jankowski. She was awarded the prize of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in 2008 while in 2010 she received the Polish PEN Club's Editorial Prize (Nagroda Edytorska). She was made full professor in 2012.
She has received various awards, including the medal of the Commission of National Education in 2005, the Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis – Bronze, Silver and then Gold (in 2006, 2010 and 2016 respectively), and both the Officers' Cross and the Commanders' Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. She lives in Warsaw.