CZACHOWSKA Jadwiga

Born on 30 October 1922 in Lwów (today: Lviv, Ukraine); daughter of the lawyer and political activist Antoni Nowak-Przygodzki, and the doctor Zofia Gumowska (of the Rola noble family). She attended the Queen Jadwiga Grammar and Secondary School No. XIII in Lwów. She was a member of the Polish Scouting Association (ZHP). Following the outbreak of the Second World War and the occupation of Lwów by the USSR, she completed middle school before studying Romance philology at the Ukrainian Ivan Franko University in the city in 1940/41. During the German occupation, she worked as a cashier at an ironware shop, before becoming in mid-1942 a laboratory assistant at the Behring Institute, which produced anti-typhus vaccines. She studied Polish philology in parallel at the undegound Jan Kazimierz University in the city. She was involved as a messenger in the conspiratorial activities of the Polish Military Organization, which was incorporated into the Home Army (AK) in 1943. She was arrested by the Gestapo in January 1944 in Stalowa Wola. She was subsequently imprisoned in Tarnów and the Montelupie prison in Krakow. She was released in April of the same year, following a bail payment from her family. She continued her studies in Polish philology at the Jagiellonian University (UJ) after the war, graduating with a master's degree in 1948. She was an instructor in the Krakow District of the Polish Scouting Association between 1945 and 1949. In 1946, she co-edited the scouting section of "Młoda Rzeczpospolita", where she also published articles, reviews and discussion pieces (as: Jaga, Jadwiga Przygodzka). That year, she married the historian Adam Czachowski. In 1949, she started working at the Institute of Literary Research (IBL) in Warsaw, where she collected material for the Bibliografia zawartości literackiej czasopism polskich XIX i XX wieku (Bibliography of contents of Polish literary periodicals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries). She initially lived in Sulejówek, before moving to the capital in 1955. In 1950, she joined the team working on a new, contemporary edition of Gabriel Korbut's Literatura polska (Polish literature), while at the same time leading a time working on a bibliography of the contents of selected periodicals of the progressive movement of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries (1950-58). In 1951, she was made research assistant and then in 1954 senior lecturer at the Department of Scientific Documentation of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century Polish Literature. Her first scholarly publication, a book on the Lwów-based periodical "Sygnały", appeared in 1952. In 1953, she completed a course for freelance bibliographers that was organized by the National Library. She took her first trips to France in 1956, 1958 and 1962, with her parents having emigrated to the country. While in Paris, she became acquainted with the group associated with the monthly "Kultura", which aided her efforts to acquire materials relating to émigré writers. While working on editing the Słownik współczesnych pisarzy polskich (Dictionary of contemporary Polish writers), she was also involved in other individual bibliographical and editorial projects. As part of her research on the works of Gabriela Zapolska, Leopold Staff and Ostap Ortwin, she took research visits to Lviv and Kyiv in 1960 and 1967. She was awarded a doctoral degree in 1963 for her book Gabriela Zapolska. Monografia biobibliograficzna (Gabriela Zapolska: A biobibliographical monograph). She was supervised by Dr Ewa Korzeniewska. In 1966, she was appointed head of the IBL Department for Słownik współczesnych pisarzy polskich (The Dictionary of Contemporary Polish Writers), which was renamed the Department for the Documentation of Contemporary Literature in 1968. Between 1966 and 1968, she was also secretary of the board of directors of IBL, while from 1966 to 1969 she served on the Institute's Scientific Council. She was appointed academic editor of Polska Bibliografia Literacka (Polish Literary Bibliography) in 1967 (covering the years 1966 to 1986), while in 1968 she was made editor of the contemporary section of the Słownik pseudonimów pisarzy polskich (Dictionary of Polish writers' pseudonyms), which was prepared by IBL and made available as a typescript in 1990. She served on the editorial board of the periodical studies yearbook "Rocznik Historii Czasopiśmiennictwa Polskiego" between 1969 and 1975. She was a member of the Committee on Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (KNoL PAN) between 1969 and 1972. Around 1970, together with Maria Krystyna Maciejewska and Teresa Tyszkiewicz, she started collecting materials in Polish and international libraries that would be used in the monumental bibliography Literatura polska i teatr w latach II wojny światowej (Polish literature and theatre in World War II period; published 1983-86). The research related to this project involved trips to the United Kingdom and the German Democratic Republic. In 1973/74, she gave lectures in auxiliary subjects at the University of Warsaw (UW) and as part of the IBL doctoral programme. In 1976, she became editor of the contemporary section of the biobibliographical guide Pisarze polscy (Polish writers), which was being prepared at IBL. A typescript was completed in 1987, but the work was never published. Between 1978 and 1984, she served on the editorial board of the Polish National Library's yearbook "Rocznik Biblioteki Narodowej". She was awarded a habilitation degree in 1981 for her study Rozwój bibliografii literackiej w Polsce (The development of literary biography in Poland) and was subsequently appointed senior lecturer at IBL. From that year until 2002, she again served as a member of the Scientific Council of IBL and on the Committee on Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (where between 1981 and 1986, she was deputy chair). In 1982, she joined the Examination Commission for Certified Employees in Scientific Documentation at PAN. She received the prize of the Scientific Secretary of PAN in 1988 in recognition of her efforts in this field. Between 1988 and 2007, she co-edited alongside Alicja Szałagan, the biobibliographical dictionary Współcześni polscy pisarze i badacze literatury (Contemporary Polish writers and literary scholars). She was appointed professor in 1991 and retired in 1993. That year, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Polish PEN Club in recognition of her activities in the realm of editing. She remained active as a researcher following retirement. In 1997, she was made a corresponding member and in 2005 a full member of the Warsaw Learned Society. She received the Gold Cross of Merit in 1987, the Medal for Merit for Employees in Information Technology and Science in 1988, and the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2012. She had two daughters from her marriage to Adam Czachowski: Barbara (b. 1947; married name: Sieszycka) and Joanna, (b. 1953; married name: Robińska), who are both psychologists. She died on 10 February 2013 in Warsaw and is buried at the city's Powązki Cemetery.