Klementyna Tanska Hoffman

Klementyna Hoffmanowa (born Klementyna Tańska; 23 November 1798 – 21 September 1845) was a Polish popular literary writer, translator, editor, and one of Poland's first writers of children's literature. She co-organized and chaired the Patriotic Charity Association. She was the first woman in Poland to support herself from writing and teaching, and considered herself primarily a writer.

She was the daughter of Ignacy Tański, a Polish writer and novelist. For some time she lived with her mother in Warsaw. In 1819 she published her first book, Pamiątka po dobrej matce, czyli ostatnie jej rady dla córki (Remembering a good mother, or her final advice to her daughter), a monologue in which an older woman imparts final words of wisdom and advice to a daughter. Her best known book, Dziennik Franciszki Krasińskiej w ostatnich latach panowania Augusta III pisany (The Diary of Countess Francoise Krasinska, written in the final years of the reign of King Augustus III), has been translated into several languages including English.[1]

In 1829 she married Karol Boromeusz Hoffman, writer, lawyer and historian, and changed her name to Hoffmanowa, a marital form of her husband's surname. After Poland's November Uprising against the Russian Empire was crushed in the second half of 1831, Hoffmanowa moved with her husband to Dresden, and later settled in Paris. She was called "the Mother of the Great Emigration”.

Hoffmanowa died in 1845, and was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. In 1919 a Warsaw high school, one of the oldest in the country, was named after her.