Literary Association of the Friends of Poland

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Literary Association of the Friends of Poland is a British organisation of solidarity with Poles, founded February 25, 1832 in United Kingdom by the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell and German lawyer Adolphus Bach. Although the creation of the LAFP was the result of deep pro-Polish sympathies of Campbell and the whole contemporary British public opinion, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski did attend a dinner for the association, in Edinburgh 1835 along with Count Zamoyski.

History

Thomas Campbell was the Society's first President, and the first secretary was a young Anglo-Irishman, Richard Graves Meredith. The main goal of the society was to sustain the interest of British public opinion in the Polish question after the failure of the November Uprising. Its members included many influential British political figures, e.g. Sir Francis Burdett, Dudley Ryder, Robert Cutlar Fergusson, Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart, Thomas Wentworth Beaumont, Daniel O'Connell, Thomas Attwood and Patrick Stuart.

There were also a number of regional associations created in 1832 which supported the main association in London: these were: Hull Literary Polish Society (founded in July 1832), Glasgow Polish Association (founded in October 1832), and the Birmingham Polish Association (founded in October 1832).

Maude Ashurst Biggs and her mother were enthusiastic supporters in the 1880s. Biggs published English translations of Adam Mickiewicz's epic poetry. In 1882 she published her translation of Mickiewicz's epic poem Konrad Wallenrod which had somehow not been censored by the Russians and in 1885 she published her translation of another of his epic poems Master Thaddeus, or, The Last Foray in Lithuania to assist the cause.

References

The Literary Association of the Friends of Poland was also known as the Polish Association (Campbell 1849, p. 101 and Tyler 1851, pp. 283, 284)
Żurawski vel Grajewski, Radosław. Działalność księcia Adama Jerzego Czartoryskiego w Wielkiej Brytanii (1831-1832), Warszawa: "Semper" 1999.
Literary association of the friends of Poland 1832, p. 35.
Literary association of the friends of Poland 1832, p. 320.
Literary association of the friends of Poland 1832, p. 323,413.
Zurawski vel Grajewski, R. Księżna Dorothea Lieven wobec Polski i Polaków: pojedynek za kulisami wielkiej dyplomacji, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo DiG 2005.
Spain, Jonathan (23 September 2004). "Biggs, Matilda Ashurst (1816/17–1866), campaigner for women's rights and supporter of Italian independence". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1 (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/59172. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Sources

Campbell, Thomas (1849). Beattie, William (ed.). Life and letters of Thomas Campbell. Vol. 3. E. Moxon. p. 101.
"Literary association of the friends of Poland". Polonia (1–5). Charles Fox et al: 35, 320, 323, 413. August–December 1832.
Tyler, Edward Royall, ed. (1851). "Art. VII.—Life and Writings of Campbell". New Englander and Yale Review. New Series–Volume 3. 9. et al (eds). New York: W.L. Benedict: 261–289.

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