Background
Elisaveta Lyubomirova Belcheva was born on April 16, 1893 in Sofia, Bulgaria in clerk's family. She was the firstborn of Maria and Lyubomir Belchev's seven children. The family moved among small villages following Lyubomir's work.
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Elisaveta Lyubomirova Belcheva was born on April 16, 1893 in Sofia, Bulgaria in clerk's family. She was the firstborn of Maria and Lyubomir Belchev's seven children. The family moved among small villages following Lyubomir's work.
Attending schools in Sliven and Veliko Turnovo, Elisaveta graduated from a Sofia high school in 1910. After one year teaching in the village of Autanè, she enrolled at the University of Sofia where she studied Slavonic philology. But Bagryana was filled with a passion for both reading and writing poetry, which had seen its beginnings in her adolescence.
Poet Yordan Yovkov, who first encouraged her to publish, guided two of her poems to press in 1915. A noted perfectionist, Bagryana did not enjoy seeing her work in print and withdrew again to high school teaching. Her working-class roots have been credited for helping her develop a keen eye for realistic, traditional life, a vision which would later win her a faithful Bulgarian readership.
She started writing regularly and, in October of 1922, first published under the pseudonym Elisaveta Bagryana. The marriage soon soured. By the time of her divorce in April of 1925, her work was coming to national and European attention.
While Bagryana's popularity rose, her productivity decreased as she dedicated herself to writer Boyan Penev. Bagryana resumed writing and before year's end released her first volume of poetry The Eternal and the Sacred, one of the most celebrated collections in Bulgarian poetry.
Ostensibly promoting her work, she fled to France and Italy for two years. On her return to Bulgaria in 1929, she secured a lifetime arrangement with publisher Khemus which assured her a monthly stipend. During World War II the fire destroyed most of Bagryana's personal papers.
Bagryana once again took to traveling, roaming well into her 80s. She died at age 98 in 1973. Her work has been translated and published internationally.
In 1919, Bagryana married army captain Ivan Shapkarev, the son of Bulgaria's famous folklorist Kuyman Shapkarev; that same year, their own son was born. She had a a three-year open relationship with Boyan Penev, her former teacher and constant companion, who was already married. She then married publicist and critic Aleksandur Likov.
