Kornel Makuszyà Âski (; 8 January 1884 â 31 July 1953) was a Polish writer of children's and youth literature. He was an elected member of the prestigious Polish Academy of Literature in the interwar Poland.
Makuszyà Âski was born in Stryj in the Austrian Partition of Poland (now in Ukraine) to Edward and Julia née Ogonowska. He attended the Jan Dà Âugosz gymnasium in Lviv (Polish: Lwów). While in school he wrote occasional poetry (he started writing at the age of 14). Makuszyà Âski had his first poem published in 1902 in the newspaper Sà Âowo Polskie (Polish Word), for which he soon became a theatrical critic. He studied language and literature at both the University of Lviv (then Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów, Poland) and in Paris. He was evacuated to Kiev (Ukrainian: Kyiv) in 1915, where he ran the Polish Theatre and was the chairman of the Polish writers and journalist community. He moved to Warsaw in 1918, and became a writer.
His children's books, particularly the series about the goat, Kozioà Âek Matoà Âek, illustrated by Marian Walentynowicz, have an enduring popularity in Poland, whatever the sharp changes in the country's fortunes and its political system. They have been translated into many other languages. Among others, they are very popular in Israel, where Polish Jewish immigrants since the 1920s and 1930s took care to have many of them translated into Hebrew and introduced them to their own children.
Makuszyà Âski was temporarily blacklisted right after World War II by his chief rival at the Polish Academy of Literature and later, communist apparatchik Wincenty Rzymowski, a plagiarist. Makuszyà Âski died in 1953 in Zakopane, where he lived from 1945. He was buried at the Peksowe Brzysko cemetery in Zakopane. There is a museum dedicated to him in the city, originally launched by his widow, Janina.