Karel Jaromír Erben


Karel Jaromír Erben was a Czech folklorist and poet of the mid-19th century, best known for his collection Kytice, which contains poems based on traditional and folkloric themes.
He also wrote Písně národní v Čechách which contains 500 songs and Prostonárodní české písně a říkadla, a five-part book that brings together most of Czech folklore.
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Biography

He was born on November 7, 1811 in Miletín near Jičín. He went to college in Hradec Králové. Then, in 1831, he went to Prague where he studied philosophy and later law. He started working in the National Museum with František Palacký in 1843. He became editor of a Prague's newspaper in 1848. Two years later, in 1850, he became archives' secretary of the National Museum. He died on November 21, 1870 of tuberculosis.
He was member of the Czech National Revival, and politically he was also a sympathizer of Illyrian movement and Russian Slavophilia for entrenched populations of Slavs in other parts of the world.
As practitioner of his ideals, he published Sto prostonárodních pohádek a pověstí slovanských v nářečích původních, also known by its subtitle Čitanka slovanská, that was influenced by the Grimms' collection of fairy tales. It included such pieces as tale No. 2, "Dlouhý, Široký a Bystrozraký". The entire volume was translated by W. W. Strickland, and eventually published as Panslavonic Folk-lore in 1930.
He is also considered an important poet of the Czech literary Romanticism in the mid-19th century, with his collection of a dozen literary ballads entitled Kytice z pověstí národních.

Selected works