Gabriela Zapolska

Born Maria Gabriela Stefania Korwin-Piotrowska in 1857, Gabriela Zapolska was a Polish novelist, playwright, journalist, theatre critic, and actress. She wrote under a pen name and built a reputation as a fearless observer of middle-class manners, especially the gap between public respectability and private behavior.

Zapolska is closely associated with literary Naturalism, and her fiction and plays often focus on social inequality, women’s lives, poverty, and hypocrisy. She was remarkably prolific, producing novels, short stories, journalism, and dozens of plays over the course of her career.

She died in Lviv in 1921, but her work has lasted, above all through The Morality of Mrs. Dulska, a darkly funny and still lively satire that helped secure her place in Polish literature.