There are numerous streets and monuments all around Poland named after Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), perhaps the most important writer to ever lift a quill and write in the Polish language – according to Wikipedia, he was a “dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor of Slavic literature, and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus.” He was friends with Frederic Chopin and devoted his life to championing the cause of Polish independence (Poland was partitioned and erased from world maps by neighbouring empires between the 18th and 20th centuries). 

​

    So when in the summer of 2019, I learnt that Adam Mickiewicz had written his own versions of Fables by the French author Jean de La Fontaine (in themselves based on ancient Greek fables by Aesop) – rhymed poems intended to entertain and educate readers both young and perhaps not so young... I knew this was the discovery I had been looking for all my life, as a tutor, a translator, a publisher and champion of reading and cultural exchange. 

​

    Although Adam Mickiewicz's greatest plays and poems have been translated numerous times into numerous languages, these remarkable rhyming verse-form fables had not only never been translated into English – they are widely unknown to Polish readers around the world, most of whom have been raised on Mickiewicz's much more serious and challenging works. ​