Novel · A way to begin
The Grandmother
Babička
Božena Němcová · 1855
Synopsis
A grandmother comes to live with her daughter's family, whose husband serves a princess, at the edge of a Bohemian valley. She raises her grandchildren, Barunka, Vilém, Jan and Adélka, tells them about her youth, nurses, advises and arranges the marriages of the neighbourhood, and wins the friendship of the princess. In the woods wanders Viktorka, a young woman who lost her reason after being seduced by a soldier: the grandmother teaches the children not to judge her.
Context
Begun at the end of 1853, after the death of the author's eldest son, the book was finished in the summer of 1854. After refusals, the Prague publisher Jaroslav Pospíšil accepted it and published it in four instalments between May and August 1855, under the subtitle Tableaux de la vie campagnarde. The second edition appeared in 1862, and the author signed the first copies just before she died. Adolf Kašpar's illustrations, in 1903, fixed its image, and the cinema adapted it in 1922 and then in 1940.
Who it is for
The book follows the cycle of the seasons and festivals rather than a plot. It can be read in French in Eurydice Antolin's translation, published in 2008.
Prizes and reception
Reprinted more than three hundred times in Czech, it is the most widely read book of the nation, according to the museum devoted to its author.