Today we present the edition of part II of “Mr. Podstoli” by Ignacy Krasicki, published by the famous Warsaw bookseller Michał Groll in 1784.
Krasicki (1735-1801), one of the outstanding figures of the Polish Enlightenment, was a poet, prose writer and encyclopedist, called by his contemporaries the prince of poets. Bishop Krasicki was also, and this is what interests us most today, the precursor of the Polish novel. He wrote four works in this genre: “Mikołaj Doświadczyński’s Cases”, “History” and “A True Novel About a Corner Tenement House in Kukorowce” and “Pan Podstoli”.
The work was subordinated to the civic and moral discourse. The title character is a land official, who in the fifteen-level hierarchy of Crown offices occupies exactly the eighth place. However, Krasicki does not show him as an official, but as a moderately wealthy nobleman-host. He appears as an example of a nobleman-landlord, and one of the main threads of the novel is the definition of a “good landlord”.
That is why the work was most often compared to “The Life of a Honest Man”, in which Rej showed the process of becoming an ideal landowner nobleman. An attractive old print, and one of the first Polish novels.

Ignacy Krasicki “Mr. Podstoli”, part II, [old print, 1784]