Zsigmond Móricz (ˈʒiɡmond ˈmoːrits, June 29, 1879, Tiszacsécse

Tiszacsécse

Tiszakanyár is a village in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary.-Geography:It covers an area of and has a population of 271 people ....

 — September 4, 1942) was a major Hungarian

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 novelist and Social Realist

Social realism

Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...

. He was among the earliest significant literary figures writing in Hungarian.

Early life and education

Zsigmond Móricz was born in Tiszacsécse

Tiszacsécse

Tiszakanyár is a village in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary.-Geography:It covers an area of and has a population of 271 people ....

 in 1879 to Bálint Móricz and Erzsébet Pallagi. On his mother's side he came from an impoverished but ancient noble family while his father was the descendant of serfs. He studied at Debreceni Református Kollégium (1891-1893), Sárospataki Kollégium (1894-1896), and in Kisújszállás (1896-1898). In 1899, he enrolled at Debreceni Református Kollégium to study theology

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

, but transferred into law after only six months.

Career

In 1903, he began to work as a journalist at the newspaper Az Újság, remaining there until 1909.

During the revolutionary government after World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, he was vice president of the Vörösmarty Academy. After its fall, his plays were not performed in the National Theater, and his work was published only in Nyugat

Nyugat

Nyugat , was the most influential Hungarian literary journal in the first half of the 20th century. Writers and poets from that era are referred to as "1st/2nd/3rd generation of the NYUGAT"....

and Az Est. At the end of 1929 he became the prose editor for Nyugat.

Marriage and family

In 1905 Moricz married Eugénia Holics. Suffering from depression, she committed suicide in 1925.

He married for a second time in 1926 to Mária Simonyi.

Work

His novels expressed the lives of the Hungarian peasantry and dealt with issues of poverty.

Works

• Légy jó mindhalálig (Be Faithful Unto Death) (1920)
• Úri muri (Very Merry) (1928)
• Rokonok (Relations) (1932)
• Hét krajcár (Seven Pennies and Other Short Stories) (1907)
• Az ezüstkirály sípja. Iromba J (Silver King’s Flute; Broody Jankó)