About the author

Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić was a Croatian writer and archivist, born in Ogulin on 18 April 1874 and died in Zagreb on 21 September 1938.  She was the eldest of five surviving children of Henrietta von Bernath Lendway and Vladimir Mažuranić, lawyer and president of the Southern-Slavic Academy of Sciences and Arts (now the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts). Her father was the son of Ivan Mažuranić, the renowned Croatian Ban (the chief government official). She received her education and learnt six languages through home schooling.

When she was 18, she married Vatroslav Brlić, lawyer and member of the Croatian Sabor (Parliament) and also of the Hungarian-Croatian Parliament. Ivana strongly supported her husband’s political activities, and their home in Brod na Savi was a centre of resistance to the regime of Khuen Héderváry, a Hungarian who served as the Croatian Ban at the turn of the 20^th century. The Brlićs had seven children, only five of whom lived to adult age.

Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić was very much a literary experimentalist: she wrote only one work in each of the literary forms she chose to write in, but many of those have high literary value. Although she wrote a children’s book of stories and poems titled Valjani i nevaljani [The Good and the Mischievous] in 1902, she considered the collection of stories and poems Škola i praznici [School and Holidays], published in 1905, to be the beginning of her literary career. In 1912, she published a collection of poems called Slike [Images], but it had no significant impact on the adult readers it was written for. However, the children’s novel Čudnovate zgode šegrta Hlapića [The Strange Adventures of Hlapich the Apprentice], published in 1913, was a great success. Her next book, Priče iz davnine of 1916  [Tales of Long Ago], was even more acclaimed. It was translated into over 40 languages, the English translation appearing in 1924, and the German one in 1933. This collection of stories is an exceptional combination of the suggestiveness of ancient storytelling, oral narration, surrealistic imagery, and unusually skilfully constructed plots. In 1923, she wrote a collection of poetry and prose titled Knjiga omladini [A Book for Youth]. Four years later, in cooperation with the painter Vladimir Kirin as illustrator, she created one of the first Croatian picturebooks, Dječja čitanka o zdravlju [A Children’s Reader on Health].  Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić was also extensively engaged in putting the rich Brlić family archives in order. She published three volumes of selected materials in 1934 and 1935, titled Iz arhiva obitelji Brlić u Brodu na Savi [From the Brlić Family Archives in Brod na Savi], which included a selection of letters and journals of Andrija Torkvat Brlić from 1848 to 1852. The young adult historical novel Jaša Dalmatin, published in 1937, was the last work of fiction by this great author.

The masterpieces of children’s literature written by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić finally justified the previous long endeavours to establish Croatian children’s literature. Her works are not only the high point of Croatian children’s literature, but, as unique cultural phenomena, even extend its boundaries.

Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić became the first female member of the Southern-Slavic Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1937. She was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize for literature in the 1930s.