Publishing Byron in Communist Poland: Juliusz Żuławski’s Editions of Byron’s Works

Between 1953 and 1986, Juliusz Żuławski, writer and translator, published two major Polish editions of Byron’s works: Z pism Byrona [Selected Writings], 1953–61, and Wybór dzieł [Selected Works], 1986. Żuławski primarily relied on nineteenth-century Polish translations, revising them where necessary and supplementing them with explanatory annotations. He also translated several works by Byron that had not previously appeared in Polish, including The Curse of Minerva and The Deformed Transformed . This essay argues that Żuławski’s thinking on Byron was shaped by the legacy of Polish Romanticism, particularly by Adam Mickiewicz’s views on the poet. It also examines the editorial strategies Żuławski employed, which emerged, on the one hand, in response to the requirements imposed on literary publications by the communist regime and his desire to express protest against the totalitarian system, on the other. *