Despite the political and economic insignificance of Poland in the international arena during the century and more of her political eclipse, a spiritual struggle went on within the Polish nation which was all the more intense for lack of practical and material avenues of expression. In the sharp focal point of Stefan Żeromski's novels, short-stories, and sociological pamphlets there is concentrated the pain, the despair, the sacrifice, and the triumphant exultation of the whole period during which Poland struggled up out of bondage into a “brave new world” of freedom.
From the point of view of content, therefore, Stefan Żeromski is without question one of the most interesting and important Polish writers of the last fifty years. His works identify themselves so closely with the struggle of Poland for freedom and for social justice within that freedom that they are a veritable mirror of the historical events, the ideological currents, and the intellectual and emotional attitudes swaying the whole generation of Poles who lived to see their disembodied nation take on the flesh of statehood.