First years of the Warsaw’s „Friednd of the Children”: in the circle of Henryk Lewestam and associates (April 1861 – June 1865)

Abstract

The article is an analysis and critique-based attempt to present the first phase of the history of the most important magazine for children and youth on the second half of the 19th century and the positivist era, and at the same time the first of the long-lasting periodicals of this type - the Warsaw’s weekly „Friend of the Children” (1861-1915). The founder of the magazine, (appearing since 3 IV 1861), the creator of its concept and the first chief editor was an enterprising literary critic and journalist, Fryderyk Henryk Lewestam, in truth though the magazine has been led since 1862 by Michał Szymanowski, since 1863 together with Jan Chęciński. The periodical formulated a general plan of connecting learning and fun, realized through creating eight main parts of the publication: popularizing religious knowledge, information on the history of Poland and general history, the so-called morality (elements of ethics and rules of proper behaviour), natural sciences, elements of country science and ethnography of the historical lands of Poland, selected information from general geography, literary pieces and a number of small entertainment texts. The popular science publications often included elements of fictionalization. The literary department remained under much influence of the enlightened formation, it also used the still living and writing authors of the „national” romanticism, but there were also the younger writers of the shaping positivist generation. All the texts of the „Friend of the Children” were very strongly infused with elements of lecturing and didactism, serving the shaping of the personality of a young reader in the spirit of obedience to parents, future usefulness to their country, social solidarity and charity-philanthropic attitude towards the „lower classes”. The first phase of the magazine’s history ended with the appearance of Władysław Ludwik Anczyc as a chef editor on 8 VII 1865.