Jakub Arbes (12 June 1840, Prague (Smíchov) – 8 April 1914) was a Czech writer and intellectual. He is best known as the creator of the literary genre called romanetto and spent much of his professional life in France.
In 1867, he began his career in journalism as editor of Vesna Kutnohorská, and from 1868 to 1877, as the chief editor of the National Press. Arbes was also an editor of political magazines Hlas (The Voice) and Politiky (Politics), and a sympathizer of the Májovci literary group. During this time, Arbes was persecuted and spent 15 months in the Czech Lipa prison, for leading opposition to the ruling Austro-Hungarian Empire.[1] He left Prague soon after, spending time in Paris and the South of France as part of the intellectual community there. In France, he was an associate of other "Bohemian Parisiens" such as Paul Alexis, Luděk Marold, Guy de Maupassant, Viktor Oliva, and Karel Vítězslav Mašek, as well as the French writer Émile François Zola.
David Short graduated with a BA in Russian with French from the University of Birmingham in 1965 and spent 1966–72 in Prague studying, working, translating and having fun. He then taught Czech and Slovak at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London from 1973 to 2011. He has translated a wide range of literary and non-literary Czech texts including Prague. I see a city… by Daniela Hodrová and Bliss was it in Bohemia by Michal Viewegh, both published by Jantar. He has won awards both for translations and for his contribution to Czech and Slovak studies, notably in 2004 the Czech Minister of Culture’s Artis Bohemicae Amicus medal and the Medal of the Comenius University in Bratislava.
