rection of the Czech language was Milton’s Paradise Lost, which Jungmann translated. Published in 1811, it inaugurated the modern movement towards fresh literary efforts.
Jungmann’s call did not sound in vain. It became evident that the genius of the country had only been waiting for a medium in which to express itself. The lyric and epic poems of Mácha (1810–1836), and two decades later those of K. Jaromír Erben, were the first original works to emerge, and prose soon followed. Two women writers, Božena Němcová (1820–1862) and Karolína Sv̌etlá (1830–1899), wrote novels depicting the life of the Bohemian peasants, while Jan Neruda (1834–1891) chiefly presented that of the bourgeoisie in Prague. The same milieu attracted Ignát Herrmann, whose delightful sense of humour and human sympathy endeared him to his fellow-citizens and countrymen of pre-war imperial Prague, and still makes this doyen of Czech novelists a favourite in the newly created Republic.
The independence gained by the Czech nation after the Great War has influenced the mental attitude of its literary men, who feel that they are now ranging themselves with the writers of other European countries, and the
