author
István Toldy
1844–1879
A sharp-eyed Hungarian writer and journalist of the 1870s, he brought a distinctly modern, civic-minded outlook to his fiction. Though he died young, his work helped mark an early turn toward bourgeois realism in Hungarian literature.
1 Audiobook
Anatole: Regény
by István Toldy
About the author
Born in Pest in 1844, István Toldy was the son of the literary historian Ferenc Toldy. He studied law, worked as a journalist, and became known in Hungarian literary life as both a writer and a public-minded intellectual. He was also a member of the Kisfaludy Society.
Toldy wrote during a period of social change in Hungary, and his fiction is remembered for its consciously modern perspective. Literary histories describe him as one of the first writers of the Compromise era to pursue clearly bourgeois aims in theme, outlook, and aesthetics, with an interest in contemporary society rather than romantic idealization.
He died in Budapest in 1879, only 35 years old. Even with a short life and career, he remains a notable figure in 19th-century Hungarian literature for the seriousness of his social vision and for the way his writing reflected the emerging urban middle-class world of his time.