The prose writer Svatopluk Hrnčíř was born on May 21st 1926 in Lázně Bělohrad. He studied at the grammar school in Nový Bydžov where he graduated in 1945 (following the disruption of his studies in 1942, he trained as a bookseller). He graduated from the State Librarian School. As a passionate reader of Jaroslav Foglar he was a reporter for the popular magazine Mladý hlasatel (writer 2084).
He edited magazines for young people (Junák, Pionýr-Větrník), some of which he sub-edited (Vpřed, Pionýr), in 1948 he co-founded Ohníček and he worked on its editorial board until 1968. In the magazines for children and young people he published adventure stories and wrote the text to accompany illustrated serials, some of which became the basis for book editions. From 1968-1989 he edited the children’s column Slovíčko (for the newspaper Svobodné slovo), where Foglar’s works were also published. Here were printed Foglar’s Rychlé šípy [Fast Arrows] stories and serials (artist Kája Saudek).
In his first work, Případ skončil v pátek (1959; in 1963 it was filmed under the title Zpívající pudřenka), Hrnčíř’s story is about the mysterious disappearance of a wireless telephone set in Prague. This novella already contains the distinctive features of Hrnčíř’s story-telling: the protagonists are a fearless team made up mainly of boys who solve a mystery which is almost detective-like in nature, and the unravelling of which proceeds along the basis of a logical chain of events. Recently in his adventure stories the author has been uncovering the mysterious, closed world of Jaroslav Foglar’s Rychlé šípy (a Czech author of books and comics for children and young people, where the main protagonists are usually teams of boys or scout groups.)
(jč)
This author profile was last updated in 2007.
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