„Believe me, my life has been like any novel of a thousand and one nights”. Autobiographical letters of Ferenc Pulszky from 1869

Autobiographical letters of Ferenc Pulszky from 1869

Abstract

The autobiographical writings of Ferenc Pulszky (1814–1897), director of the Hungarian National Museum, entitled My Life and My Age, were published between 1880 and 1882. His autobiographical reflections, however, were written even earlier, and of particular interest are the four unpublished letters – found in the Manuscript Archives of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – written in 1869, the year of his appointment as museum director. The letters were addressed to his friend, the literary historian Ferenc Toldy, who was collecting biographical data for a work. In the first letter, Pulszky
summarised his life, in the second his foreign contacts, and in the third the history of his collection. In the fourth letter, he answered Toldy’s questions. The letters are of considerable value as sources and can be seen as a foreword to his memoirs, which, in addition to highlighting and condensing their essence, also contain new information.