Or perhaps more appropriately called "The Miroslaw Lipinski Collection," as I want to donate my collection of Sienkiewiczania to a library or educational institution in the United States. For a while now, I've wanted to do this, and my collection, acquired through a few decades, is without doubt the largest and most impressive collection of its kind in the world, focusing on the many English translations of Sienkiewicz's work published here around 1900 after QUO VADIS became such a huge bestseller for Little, Brown & Company in 1896. As at the time Poland did not officially exist and there was no copyright agreement between the United States and Russia (one of the masters of divided Poland and in whose territory Sienkiewicz lived), publishing houses in this country were legally free to issue their own translations of Sienkiewicz's work. I don't have the exact count at my fingertips, but at least half a dozen different translations of QUO VADIS were published, and the Philadelphia publisher Altemus issued the bookend parts of Sienkiewicz's Trilogy (that is, WITH FIRE AND SWORD and PAN MICHAEL) in translations done by Samual A. Binion. These translations competed with those done earlier by Jeremiah Curtin for Little, Brown & Company, located in Boston. (Curtin introduced Sienkiewicz to the English-speaking world and was Sienkiewicz's foremost English translator during Sienkiewicz's lifetime.) Altemus also tried to release as quickly as possible a translation of Sienkiewicz's KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS, the first historical novel Sienkiewicz wrote after the international success of QUO VADIS, directly competing with Little, Brown & Company, who persuaded Sienkiewicz, without much problem, to "sanction" and approve their Curtin translation of the book. As Sienkiewicz was serializing KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS in a Polish paper, both Little, Brown & Company and Altemus released their respective books in parts--Little, Brown in two volumes and Altemus in three. With its connection to Sienkiewicz, the Boston publisher naturally beat Altemus in getting a complete edition of KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS out on the American market, resulting in Altemus' third and concluding volume to be published when interest had died down. (This rarer third volume is generally not included in online book sales of the Binion translation, causing readers to be irritated by the lack of an ending to the story once they conclude reading volume two of the Altemus edition.)
Anyway, I have in my collection at least seventy-five American-produced Sienkiewicz books, in various editions from various publishers in various translations--most of them over a hundred years old. Included in this grouping is a Little, Brown & Company edition of THE DELUGE, Sienkiewicz's second book in his Trilogy, signed by Sienkiewicz himself, and an Altemus edition of WITH FIRE AND SWORD signed by its translator, Samuel A. Binion. These books need to be cared for better than I can and should be archived for scholars and researchers, and made freely available to interested parties.
My collection also includes many photocopies of old ads and reviews for Sienkiewicz's English translations, themselves telling a fascinating story of Sienkiewicz's reception in the United States. I spent countless hours, days, weeks going through microfilms and collections at New York's Public Library on 42nd and Fifth to find these ads and reviews, and I doubt anyone will ever go through the same trouble again, which would mean being afflicted by the same bibliographic madness I was at the time.
As someone who is always interested in film, I also have stills, posters and pressbooks from various films based on Sienkiewicz's work, including the little seen and intriguing 1963 Italian production of WITH FIRE AND SWORD, starring Jeanne Crain and Pierre Brice. (I also have a black-and-white 16mm TV print of this film.)
Then, of course, there is my own work and papers that deal with my Sienkiewicz translations and revisions published by Hippocrene Books.
I've read that the acceptance of collections and papers to libraries and universities can be a complicated, even frustrating, endeavor. It would be a pity if that would prove to be the case here.
