Barbora Hoblová was an outstanding personality of Mladá Boleslav region at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries. She worked in the social field, ethnography and in women’s movement. Here, among others, she contributed to female education. She was born in 1852 in Nymburk. When she was twenty years old, she inspired the foundation of women’s reading society Lada where she worked until she got married. Then she moved with her husband, a high school teacher, to Mladá Boleslav. She was not active in the first years spent in this town, only in mid 1880’s she got involved in ethnography and a few years later she was one of the founders of the Ladies and Girls Association in Mladá Boleslav where she worked until her death. Thanks to her activity, many needed facilities were established: nursery, shelter for unemployed women and girls, evening school of sewing, etc. She also took part in collecting
ethnographic material for the Czechoslavic Ethnographical Exhibition in 1895, for which she was highly praised and which brought her to attention. Many times she proved in her numerous studies published in Český lid that she became a true expert on her region. She proved that Mladá Boleslav region was not ethnographically uninteresting, as many people assumed, but that it had not been discovered yet. She was interested in cultural and social life until her last days, she died in her family circle on August
15, 1923 in Kokořín.
Postava baronky Sidonie Nádherné (1885–1950), mecenášky umění a přítelkyně literátů Karla Krause a Rainera Marii Rilka, jež byla spjata se zámkem ve Vrchotových Janovicích, vzbuzovala sice zájem literárních badatelů a historiků, donedávna však zůstávala ve stínu zejména obou slavných mužů. Spisovatelka a publicistka Alena Wagnerová podle recenzentky přináší nový pohled v tom, že žánr kulturněhistorické biografie propojuje s přístupem umírněného feminismu a svou hrdinku činí vskutku hlavním objektem zájmu. Její kniha, původně vydaná německy pod titulem Das Leben der Sidonie Nádherný: Eine Biographie (Hamburg 2003), je zároveň sondou do života společnosti, když prostřednictvím životního příběhu Sidonie Nádherné zachycuje dobové tendence, tužby a souvislosti., Sidonie Nádherná (1885–1950), a baroness and patroness of the arts and a love interest of the great writers Karl Kraus and Rainer Maria Rilke, has been closely linked to the manor house in Vrchotovy Janovice (Janowitz), central Bohemia. Though she has attracted the interest of scholars of literature and historians, she has until recently remained in the shadow of her two famous admirers. In the work under review (the Czech translation of Das Leben der Sidonie Nádherný. Eine Biographie, Hamburg, 2003), the writer Alena Wagnerová provides, according to the reviewer, a new view, combining the genre of cultural-historical biography with moderate feminism, truly making her protagonist the centre of interest. Her book is also a probe into a society, and by means of the life story of Sidonie Nádherná she depicts the trends, hopes, and context of the period., and [autor recenze] Milena Lenderová.