Žemaitė

Julija Beniuševičiūtė, known as Žemaitė, was born on 4 June 1845 in Bukantė, in Samogitia, into a family of landless nobility. A chambermaid at the Džiuginėnai estate, then wife of Laurynas Žymantas, she then spent decades doing farm work. At Ušnėnai, her neighbour Povilas Višinskis had her read the banned Lithuanian press and urged her to write; she published her first story after the age of forty, under a pen name suggested to her by the linguist Jonas Jablonskis. She went to the United States during the war, returned in 1921 and died on 7 December in Marijampolė.

In the catalogue 1

• Short storiesThe Daughter-in-LawMartiŽemaitė · 1896Literature