Teacher, please

Where there was, where there was not, there was once a Hungarian writer in the early 20th century. This writer was full of curiosity, interested in discoveries, the natural sciences, the latest advances in psychology, the wonders of physics. His imagination has invented unparalleled, fantastic worlds, even on a world literary scale: the Capillary, the deep-sea society, and Faremido, the land of perfect machine creatures. He had sparkling ideas, and his comic ability defined the Hungarian humorous literature of the 20th century. Still: he had the greatest success with a modest-looking string of short stories. With just over twenty stories that guide you to a school in Pest at the end of the 19th century, it is about students at the end of the 19th century, and in the 21st century it is as fresh, vibrant and modern as it was nine decades ago - at home and abroad. The student from Paris, London or Beijing felt exactly the same thing in him as today's or yesterday's schoolchildren in Szeged, Nyíregyháza, Cluj-Napoca, Košice or Subotica, Hungarian and Romanian, Hungarian and Slovak, Hungarian and Serbian. Our publication adapted the text of Mr. First Teacher's 1916 first edition (with drawings by Marcel Vértes, edited by Dick Manó, Budapest) - taking into account the author's intention - to the rules of current spelling. After 1945, all editions changed the original text or omitted some of the stories. Now, in half a century, the reader can now take the real, authentic edition for the first time. Károly Szalay