Biography

Ivana Brlić Mažuranić was born on 18th April 1874. in Ogulin.  At the place of her birth house in 1952. was built a new house in which today is the seat of the Croatian forests, at the address of Bernardin Frankopan 21. Her mother was Henrietta and father Vladimir Mažuranić, son of the first ‘’ban commoner’’ Ivan Mažuranić.  He worked in Ogulin as state attorney.  In Ivana's family there were four children, of which she was the oldest. She had brothers Bozidar (Darko) and Zelimir (Zeljko) and sister Alexandra (Alka).

 

She moved a lot during  her childhood. First she moved from Ogulin to Karlovac (1875), then to Jastrebarsko (1878), again in Karlovac (1879) and finally in Zagreb (1882). There her father gets enrolled in the State Home Department. Only permanent place,  where the family of Mažuranić was coming regularly,  was a mansion in Hališću, in the Varaždin mountains,  that her mother has inherited.  In her Autobiography  (1916) she mentions it as the most lasting and the most joyfull memory from her childhood (‘’and yet it's the only time I spend it on vacation in the Varaždin Hill, on an idyllic beautiful Hamlet, the heritage of my mother left a lasting memory in me. What say that connects for me everything what I call ... Youth’’)

 

Ivana mentions  in the Autobiography  that she visited Ogulin twice in her childhood: 1880 for the first time. Year, when on her, then six-year-old, an impression left the mountains of Klek.                  1886 for the second time, when, inspired by the Ogulin and Klek, as twelve-year-old wrote her first song, which is called Zvijezdi moje domovine (the star of my homeland).

 

In 1882. the family of Mažuranić moved to Zagreb and inhabitate the house in Mark's street number 4 (today Mletačka Street), owned by Henrietta's aunt.  Ivana was educated partly at home and she ended up two classes in girl school, with great success. From that period after she wrote down the memory of her teacher Marija Jambrišakova, under the heading of ‘’Sentence that covers the world’’, giving her teacher credit for her’s excitement by words and literary creation.

 

She studied German, Russian and English language. Every day, as recorded in the "Autobiography", she spent time with her grandfather Ivan Mažuranić in his house at Jurjevska Street  no. 5 in Zagreb. At the time, she became aware of the connection that she felt with her grandfather, of her admiration for the grandfather and the great influence which grandfather left on her.

 

Since she was eight years old Ivana Brlić Mažuranić lived in Zagreb. About that period of her childhood there are not many written traces, however, a valuable source of information about that period of adolescence is her girlish diary that she began to write when she was fourteen years old. The diary was published in editing by Sanja Lovrenčić, titled ‘’Good morning, world!’’  (Small bells, 2010.) and covers the period from 1888. up to 1891. year, when she was 14 until she was 17 years old.

 

In the documentary sense the diary is very interesting because it shows how girls just to grow up live in Zagreb at the end of the 19th century. Social life of girls takes place in houses, for the afternoon meetings with friends on which sometimes they sing, dance, play bingo. They also took walks around the city with the companionship of other married ladies. Skating and evening concerts are also mentioned in diary, as afternoon entertainment. From Ivana`s  diary we learn that she loved to dance and she was a good dancer . From Ivana’s diary we learn that she loved to dance and she was a good dancer. She also said that she missed Hališće (summer cottage on the Varaždin Hill). With adolescence changes she writes that she does not want to fall in love with someone who is not a Croat. Croatian patriotism is also an important topic in the register. Further on, in the records she mentions a notebook full of songs that she wrote which she has lost. Never the less, she wrote some of her shorter stories, poems, literary considerations in the diary also. Ivana mentioned, unfortunately very sparingly and a perusal by name Ksaver Šandor Gjalski. Also, accentated by the Christian religiosity, which we see later in her literary creativity, she confirms in a dairy in which records their reflections, prayers, examination of conscience and consideration about God and Christianity. Religion is one of the important things in a girls education, known from public conversation about raising adolescent girls, a need that nothing should be kept secret from her mother, what Ivana has mentioned in the diary but without admitting that it does not comply with these obligations fully, not revealing of the mother a few sympathies  towards peers.

It is an important period in her life when  her  grandfather Ivan Mažuranić died  in 1890. At that time she was  fifteen years old  and later  wrote her own experience of that night, the night sneaking after her parents on  Gornjogradske streets (from Mark's in which they lived by Jurjevska  in which Ivan Mažuranić lived) and unnoticed  memory of the last hours of her grandfather's testimony.

 

 Ivana Brlić Mažuranić got engaged with Dr. Vatroslav Brlić 15th August  1891., and she married him eight months later. In the diary she  records and vague impressions of meet and engagement with slightly older Brlić (he was 12 years older than her), which, as the potential groom, was recommended to  Ivana's parents by his aunt Jagoda. About her engagement life we find out  from the letters to her fiancé who lived in Brod na Savi. Ivana Brlić Mažuranić has  married Dr. Vatroslav Brlić 18th April 1892. in Zagreb, on her eighteenth birthday. The wedding was  quiet and unassuming because the groom was in mourning for his recently deceased uncle. After the wedding with her husband she arrives at Brod na Savi , and then moved to the House of Brlić, which then she arranges, with her mother's help and advice. Most of the details of Ivana's  life in the period after the wedding is known from her private letters at the beginning of her marriage life.

 

Ivana and Vatroslav went on the honeymoon in August 1892. In two weeks they traveled halfway across a large part of the Dalmatian coast and Islands and from Dubrovnik to Bosnia back to the Brod. Ivana writes almost daily describing trips to her mother by informing about her travel impressions.

 

Ivana's first child was born 30th January 1893. Her oldest child is daughter Nada. The second child, a son, Ivan, was born in 1894, and the following year she gave birth to another  son, Vladimir, who died before celebrating his first birthday. About the sorrow and pain over the death of son Vladimir testifies in diary records and some personal letters. Another daughter, Zora,  gave birth to in 1897., and the third daughter Zdenka 1899. She gave birth again and very quickly after birth lost a son Nikola  in 1902. That's the year when she  published her first book, ''Valjani i nevaljani ''. Reasons and considerations that are encouraging her to write or not to, she wrote in the Autobiography  in 1916. She notes that it is her education, which is, as a female child, and guided to the family, domestic, marital and motherly duties, preventing  her ambition to be a writer. She could only find comfort  in already mentioned private girl's diary. However, with the birth of her children and their upbringing, Ivana gets encouraged and begins to write for her children. Her first book, published in her own publishing company, she has dedicated to  her  family and friends.

 

In this period of successive pregnancies, childbirth and many maternal, mariagge, and housekeeping obligations, Ivana lives in Slavonski Brod, but maintains the daily correspondence with her mother who lives in Zagreb. Also, ocasccasionally, Ivana  travels to Zagreb, with or without children and stays in her parents ' home.

 

In the period of 1902. to 1916. when she published the first edition of the Tales, in which is included  six stories (How Quest sought the truth, Fisherman Plunk and his wife, Regoch, Stribor's forest, Brother Jaglenac and sister Rue, Sun Dever and Neva Nevicica), Ivana lives the intense social and family life in Slavonski Brod, occasionally traveling. With that, she wrote  humorous travel memories, in which she mentions and Marija Juric Zagorka, then a news reporter, which is found in Budapest for her journalistic assignment. In that period she wrote five books,  her children grew up, her son Ivan was a part of army during WW I, and Ivana is well established and mature writer. The year 1917. She gives birth to daughter Nedjeljka, which is closer in age to Ivana's grandchildren, of which the first, grandchild Vesna, arrives in 1918. (Daughter of Nada). A year after that, in 1919,  Ivana's mother, Henrietta dies.

 

Ivana's husband Vatroslav dies in 1923. The same year Ivana  published the book ''Knjigu omladini''. In the twenties of 20th century Ivana still writes. Her brother  Želimir helps  her to  translate  her texts into foreign languages. In 1924., a collection of Tales  has been translated into English language (Croatian Tales of Long Ago) and published in London.The same publisher, ten years later, publishs Tolkien's the Hobbit. It is important to mention that in that period, Ivana wrote two more stories that are included in the third edition of the Tales  in 1926. (Toporko and nine brothers  and Yagor ).

 

In this period of her books (Tales  and Lapitch the Little Shoemaker) translated into a number of languages, and gaining the mostly rave reviews in new cultures in which translations are coming in. Inspired by some of these short echo, Ivana in private (after multiple publishings) letter explains to her son Ivan how she got the inspiration for the story. For translation and the worry over the most important translation was Ivana's brother Zeljko, which by the end of the life of Ivana`s worried and helped her with her affairs whenever she needed help.

 

Ivana's father Vladimir died in 1928.

 

In the early 1930s Ivana is experiencing a major public recognition of his literary work: it's already in 1929. year admitted to the PEN, and in 1931. year Gavro Manojlović, then-President of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU) proposes her as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature. The prize is not won. Still, that's the period still a literary and socially active, and except for the occasional travel during the 1930s it says adolescent novel Jasa Dalmatin Viceroy, Gudžerata, published in 1937. year, and the same year was admitted to the ACADEMY as the first woman which is allowed in this smoker. Is not received, of course, in the regular membership, but rather as a corresponding member. In the meantime, Gavro Manojlović again proposed her as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1935, and then two more times for the same kandira Prize (together with Albert Bazalom, the then-President of JAZU): 1937. and in 1938. of the year. The prize has not been received, and the decision about the prize in 1938. the year is not welcomed.

 

The period of the 1930s is also the period of occasional depression and physical weakening, healing and moving around, trying to get after her husband and his father's death, with irregular income, edit a life with more juvenile daughter Nedjeljka. In the fall of 1938. Ivana comes in a sanatorium  where she died on 21st September, committing the suicide.

 

 

INTERESTING FACT

 

She also had a property in Vrapče (near our School), which she mentions in a diary, telling that she was comming from a party.