Kálmán Mikszáth

Born Jan. 16, 1847, in Szklabonya; died May 28, 1910, in Budapest. Hungarian writer. Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1889).

Mikszáth was the son of a nobleman. He studied law at the University of Budapest. In 1887 he was elected a deputy to the parliament as a member of the ruling Liberal Party. Mikszáth won acclaim for his collections of stories The Slovak Kinsfolk (1881) and The Good PalÓcs (1882), in which he described the peasants with sympathy and humor, although he depicted their life somewhat idyllically. In his novel A Strange Marriage (1900; Russian translation, 1951), Mikszáth ridiculed the vestiges of feudalism and the reactionary clergy. In his short story “The Cavaliers” (1897; Russian translation, 1954) and his novel The Siege of Beszterce (1896; Russian translation, 1956), he criticized the moral degradation and parasitism among the nobility. Bitter irony permeates descriptions of parliamentary life in the novel Elections in Hungary (1893–97; Russian translation, 1965).