LAGERLÖF SELMA Homeland of Liljecrona [translated by LEOPOLD STAFF] 1924

With a foreword by the author to Polish readers, B. RUDZKI Publishing House, WARSAW 1924, pp. 272, dimensions 12.5 x 18, bookbinding, cover rubbed, slight brown stains in the text, Ex Libris on the title page, illustrated portrait of the author.

"TO MY POLISH READERS! When we Swedes read in our history books about how our kings haunted your country with war and led their armies across the Baltic Sea to Warsaw and Krakow, it sounds in our ears like a poem. After all, there is nothing left of those lands and treasures that our ancestors won for themselves, even our folk tales no longer know how to tell anything about those long and numerous wars.
But when I think about it, it seems to me that our soldiers nevertheless brought from the banks of the Vistula and Dnieper something that subsequently became the general property of our nation. On the village crowds and in fine saloons they saw your young men and women performing their splendid dances, learned them as much as they could and, returning home, brought with them a Polish dance, the Polka, which has become such a favorite in our country that it is danced in the humblest huts and played by the simplest player. The Polka has grown so closely knit with our customs that we dance it both around the Christmas tree on Christmas Day and around the flower-dressed "May...".