Translated from the Polish by Count S. C. de Soissons.
With a Fine Photogravure Portrait of the Author.
Second Edition.
A FOREWORD ON "ANIMA VILIS."
"Anima Vilis" is a novel dealing with life in Siberia as it really is, not as we have hitherto imagined it, a land of knouts, inhuman Russian officials, and sundry other horrors. In his preface, Count de Soissons says—
"Desiring to destroy the false ideas concerning the Russian Empire that have become so deeply rooted in the minds of most persons, we decided that the best way to accomplish our purpose would be by a novel based on life in Siberia, and this novel was written by Miss Marya Rodziewicz, a noted Polish writer. It is well known that there is not much sympathy between the Russians and Poles. But, at the same time, there is an honesty of purpose in those serious and earnest Polish writers, which, notwithstanding the wrongs their country has suffered at the hands of the Russians, would prevent their stooping to falsify facts. Thus Miss M. Rodziewicz's views of life in Siberia are more worthy of credence than the scribblings of those writers who, for the sake of creating a sensation, and its usual accompaniment, the desire of making money, relate blood-curdling stories of the barbarism of Russia."
SOME PRESS OPINIONS.
Leeds Mercury—
"An engrossing book. The story is a powerful one, and, breathing as it does the true life of the Siberian, is profoundly interesting."
Daily News—