Utalentowana epistolografka czasów saskich – Konstancja z Gnińskich Czapska (rekonesans)

This article is an introductory characterisation of an extensive collection of letters written in the first half of the 18th century by the Konstancja née Gnińska, wife of a Pomeranian Voivode Piotr Jan Czapski, a woman involved in great politics but also in complicated family business. The surviving sources provide an interesting example of epistolography of the period, when more and more women of noble and magnate origin reached for the pen to express their thoughts, emotions, and expectations in various forms of writing. Often educated by home teachers or at the few monastic boarding schools, they were aware of the conventions of genre on the one hand, and on the other were able to break them, introducing their own individual touch, provided they were gifted with talent. The article shows the cultural, linguistic and stylistic richness of the letters of Konstancja Czapska, who was undoubtedly one of the most interesting correspondents of the late Baroque.