Orphan Girl

"No other work of early modern Polish literature can be compared with Anna Stanislawska’s poetic account of her life. What is more — no woman in Polish literature published such a sincere and artistically valuable confession until the twentieth century. Barry Keane has an exceptional talent to render all the beauty of old poetry into English, and has successfully captured the metrical and rhyming features of the poem, and its rhetorical and performative qualities, in a translation that is both faithful and readable."
  ~Piotr Wilczek, University of Warsaw

"Barry Keane has given us a striking addition to the early modern European canon in English translation. Anna Stanislawska’s poetic account of her atrocious experience as the unwilling bride of a mad young nobleman, and of her escape, is shapely, detailed and lifelike. Her writing matches her character: tough, angry, satirical; her verve and freshness carry the reader along through the twists of a lively, detailed narrative, illuminating the forces that could destroy even aristocratic women’s lives, in a time of huge political and military disruption in Poland. Aided by its excellent scholarly framework, we enter Stanislawska’s distant place and time, and encounter a memorable woman who can make us feel her troubles and her determination as if they were close by."
  ~Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Trinity College Dublin