JOKAI, MAURUS Hungarian novelist, was born at Rev-Komarom on Feb. 19, 1825. His father, Joseph, was a member of the Asva branch of the ancient jokay family; his mother was a scion of the noble Pulays. The lad was educated at Pressburg, and then at the Calvinist college at Papa, where he first met Petofi, Alexander Kozma, and other brilliant young men who subsequently became famous. Destined by his family to the legal profession, he studied law assiduously, and, as an advocate was successful in winning his first case. But the work was uncongenial to him, and, encouraged by the encomiums pro nounced by the Hungarian Academy upon his first play, Zsido flu ("The Jew Boy"), he went to Pest in 1845 with a ms. romance in his pocket. He was introduced by Petofi to literary society, and the same year his romance Hetkoznapok ("Working Days"), ap peared, first in the columns of the Pesti Dievatlap, and subse quently, in 1846, in book form. Hetkoznapok, despite its crudi ties and extravagances, was recognized by the leading critics as a work of genius, and in the following year Jokai was appointed the editor of Eletkepek, the leading Hungarian literary journal.
On the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 the young editor en thusiastically adopted the national cause, and served it with both pen and sword.
As a moderate Liberal he set his face steadily against all ex cesses; but, carried away by the Hungarian triumphs of April and May 1849, he supported Kossuth's deposition of the Haps burg dynasty, and though, after the war was over, his life was saved by an ingenious stratagem of his wife, the great tragic actress, Roza Benke Laborfalvi, whom he had married on Aug. 29, 1848, he lived for the next fourteen years the life of a political suspect. During this period he devoted himself to the rehabili tation of the proscribed and humiliated Magyar language, corn posing in it no fewer than thirty great romances, besides innumer able volumes of tales, essays, criticisms and facetiae. This was
the period of such masterpieces as Erdely Arany Kord ("The Golden Age of Transylvania"), with its sequel Toriikvilcig Mag yarorszdgon ("The Turks in Hungary"), Egy Magyar Ncibob ("A Hungarian Nabob"), Karpdthy Zoltdn, Janicsdrok vegnap jai ("The Last Days of the Janissaries"), Szomorii napok ("Sad Days"). On the re-establishment of the Hungarian constitution by the Composition of 1867, Jokai took an active part in politics. As a supporter of the Tisza administration, both in parliament, where he sat continuously for more than twenty years, and as the editor of the government organ, Hon, founded by him in 1863, he became a power in the state, though he never took office. In 1897 the emperor appointed him a member of the upper house, where he distinguished himself in debate.
Yet it was to literature that he devoted most of his time, and his productiveness after 1870 was stupendous, amounting to some hundreds of volumes. None of this work is slipshod, and the best of it deserves to endure. Amongst the finest of his later works may be mentioned the unique and incomparable Az arany ember ("A Man of Gold")—translated into English under the title of Timar's Two Worlds—and A tengerzemii holgy ("Eyes like the Sea"), the latter of which won the Academy's prize in 1890. He died at Budapest on May 5, 1904; his wife having predeceased him in 1886. Jokai was an arch-romantic, with a perfervid Oriental imagination, and humour of the purest, rarest description.
See Nevy Laszlo, Jokai Mor; Hegedusis Sandor, Jokai Morrol; H. W. Temperley, "Maurus Jokai and the Historical Novel," Con temporary Review (July 1904) ; and the biographies by F. Zsigmond (1924), and T. Gal (1925)•