Francis de Sales Lewental

Who was Francis de Sales Lewental?

Francis de Sales Lewental was a Polish Jewish publisher; born at Włocławek, Congress Poland, 1839; died at Wiesbaden on September 24, 1902. In 1862 Lewental, the son of poor Jewish parents, bought with his accumulated savings the press of the Warsaw publisher John Glücksberg, and began his career with the "Kalendarz Ludowy", a popular almanac, which he continued until 1866. In 1865, in conjunction with others, he founded Kłosy, an illustrated weekly, which in the next year became his exclusive property. Under Lewental's management and under the editorship of Adam Plug, Kłosy became the most widely circulated illustrated weekly in Poland, and contributed in no small measure to the popularizing of Polish art and to the development of Polish wood engraving. In 1871 Lewental bought the Kółko Domowe, a home magazine, and transformed it into the popular Tygodnik Romansów i Powieści. Lewental was the proprietor also of the Świt, edited for a few years by Maria Konopnicka. In 1871, also, he issued an edition of the works of Korzeniowski, which proved so popular that it led later to similar editions of the works of Kraszewski, Kremer, Rzewuski, Skarbek, Fredro, Syrokomla, Eliza Orzeszkowa, Kaczkowski, Bałucki, etc.