Kemény, Zsigmond

Born June 12, 1814, in the village of Alvinc; died Dec. 22, 1875, in the village of Pusztakamarás. Hungarian writer. Baron.

Kemény studied law in Budapest. Prior to the Revolution of 1848 he belonged to the anti-Hapsburg opposition. In 1848, he was a deputy to the National Assembly. From 1855 to 1869 Kemény was editor of the liberal newspaper Pesti Napló. Although he wrote novels of social and everyday life such as Husband and Wife (1852), he concentrated on historical novels, including The Widow and Her Daughter (1855–57), The Fanatics (1858–59), and Grim Times (1862). The defeat of the Revolution of 1848 and the historical bankruptcy of the liberalism of the nobility were echoed in the tragically intricate psychological situations and the fatalistically tinged stoicism of these works.