Kaffka Margit

[Stewart]

It was the surname that jumped out at me first, Kaffka, for obvious reasons. From what I can tell the output of Kaffka Margit (10-Jun-1880 to 01-Dec-1918) had less to do with her famous almost-namesake, but struck a significant blow for women in Hungarian literature, then male dominated. Her themes combined the role of women in society and touched upon her Catholic upbringing, bringing an autobiographical slant to her writing.

She published four novels before her death in 1918, due to an epidemic.

• Colours And Years (1912)
• The Years Of M?ria (1913)
• Stations(1917)
• The Ant Hill (1917)

Here's the source for a few of the details above. (And a very interesting site overall, if you have an interest in the progression of Hungarian Literature.)

[Eric]

I'd actually heard of her, though I knew nothing about her. I know that Hungarians write forenames and surnames backwards, but I think you meant 1880...

The Hungarian Wiki says:

"nagyon-nagy ?r?-asszony" (Nodge-on-nodge, eerow-ass-on)

A very big writer-woman. "Big" in the sense of "great", I presume. Born in Transylvania (no bloody sniggering, it's called "Air Day" in Hungarian).

The German Wiki is quite informative:

Margit Kaffka ? Wikipedia

But, of course, Stewart's site gives the information in English.

"Nyugat" was the big literary renewal movement in the Hungarian-speaking parts of Europe. Like "Mloda Polska" in Poland, "Nuori Suomi" in Finland, and so on. Trianon cut the Romanian areas in two. There was a huge move to Modernism in Europe, often in national guise, between about 1880 and 1920. One-Eff Franz did rather put Kaffka into eclipse. And surely, no one nowadays reads novels by people with Catholic upbringing.