Jan Stastný

Born on December 6, 1824, in Želenice near Slaný, he became a Czech secondary-school teacher and textbook author at a time when modern Czech education was taking shape. He taught for more than forty years at the Czech Realschule in Prague's Ječná Street, and from 1869 to 1895 he served as its director.

He was especially known for his work on schoolbooks. Along with collaborators such as Jan Lepař and Josef Sokol, he helped prepare widely used readers and grammar books for elementary schools, including Cítanka pro školy obecné. His writing was meant for real classroom use, giving young readers stories, poems, and lessons that supported both language learning and moral education.

He died on June 17, 1913, in Královské Vinohrady. Today he is remembered less as a literary celebrity than as a steady, influential builder of Czech schooling whose books reached countless students.