Ksaver Šandor Gjalski

Who was Ksaver Šandor Gjalski?

Ksaver Šandor Gjalski, or Ljubo Babić-Gjalski was a Croatian writer and civil servant.

His real name was Ljubo Babić and he was born in Gredice castle, Klanjec, in Hrvatsko Zagorje, into a minor aristocratic family. He finished high school in Varaždin and earned law degrees in Zagreb and Vienna. He was involved in politics and had a seat in the Croatian Parliament.

He wrote novels, but his best known work is Pod starim krovovima, a collection of short stories in which he described the economic decline of the Croatian aristocracy. Gjalski managed to combine realism and poetry in his work because of his status as an aristocrat and his strong emotional connection to the region of Hrvatsko Zagorje. His importance in modern Croatian literature was described by the Croatian historiographer Antun Barac: "His appearance in the literature and political life of Croatia was fateful, and his work links the romantic orientation of Croatian writers of the sixties and seventies with the modern outlook of those who discovered the wider and stronger cultural life of Europe." Gjalski was heavily inspired by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev.