The Comedienne draws on Nobel Prize winner, Wladyslav Reymont’s, own personal experience of actors in struggling provincial theatres. Reymont paints a slow burning tragedy of rebellious Janina, the comedienne of the title, who joins a Warsaw theatre company and struggles to achieve a modern notion of freedom. A ‘Comedienne’ played drama and tragedy and the word in Polish had some connotation of a deceiver. The title in Reymont’s day would have implied a darker novel that we might unwittingly expect today. This edition includes an introduction by Marianna Rychlowska providing some context to the time and subject matter of this novel. The Comedienne has been completely re-edited and reset for Onesuch Press.