Archiwa Biblioteki Polskiej POSK w Londynie jako źródła do badań biograficznych

In her article, Dobrosława Platt presents the archives of the POSK Polish Library in London as a source of biographical research. Biographies, i.e. detailed descriptions of the lives of specific figures, have, in her opinion, been particularly popular with readers for a very long time. Even when they were not as yet linked with any genre, and the biographies of famous figures were supposed to serve only as certain patterns of behaviour, readers would eagerly listen to or rewrite “the lives of famous men” for their own libraries. Frequently, they were not a reliable reflection of a given person’s life as such, but rather a desire to create a model to follow. The researcher also states that after the Second World War many outstanding writers, poets and publicists appeared in Great Britain and continued to create there, publishing their works in exile. It seems that many of them are still on the margins of Polish literature, although they do not deserve it, and creating their biographies would perhaps allow to re–evaluate their work.