Background
January Neruda was born in Prague, Bohemia, son of a small grocer who lived in the Malá Strana (Lesser Quarter) district of Prague.
January Neruda was born in Prague, Bohemia, son of a small grocer who lived in the Malá Strana (Lesser Quarter) district of Prague.
After studying philosophy and philology, he worked as a teacher until 1860, when he became a freelance journalist and writer Neruda became, with Vítězslav Hálek, the most prominent representative of the new literary trends. Neruda was known for his satirical depiction of the petty bourgeois of Prague.
His most popular prose work is Povídky malostranské (1877, Tales of the Lesser Quarter), a collection of short stories, which was translated into English in 1957 by the novelist and mystery writer Ellis Peters.
Neruda"s stories take the reader to the Lesser Quarter, to its streets and yards, shops, churches, houses, and restaurants. He died in 1891 and was interred in the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague.
After his death, one of the streets in Lesser Quarter (Ostruhová Street well-known from his books), now Nerudova ulice (Neruda Street), was named after him. Andrew J. Feustel took a copy of "Cosmic Songs" with him on space shuttle mission STS-125.
January Neruda Grammar School is named for him.
Nerudova, the colorful street where Neruda once lived, was renamed in his honor.
In his work Neruda promoted the idea of rebirth of Czechoslovakian patriotism. He participated in all the central cultural and political struggles of his generation, and gained a reputation as a sensitive critic. Neruda was an unabashed anti-Semite as his Jewish characters, according to Madeleine Albright in her book, Prague Winter, were almost always portrayed as greedy moneylenders, a view which he seemed to assume would be widely shared.