On this release Hungaroton recorded the Hungarian poet, prose-writer and literary translator, Dezso Kosztolanyi’s most popular novels in Hungarian. Kosztolanyi was born in Szabadka (Subotica) in 1885, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but which now lies in northern Serbia. The city serves as a model for the fictional town of Sarszeg, in which he set his novella Skylark as well as The Golden Kite. Kosztolanyi studied at the University of Budapest, where he met the poets Mihaly Babits and Gyula Juhasz, and then for a short time in Vienna before quitting and becoming a journalist – a profession he stayed with for the rest of his life. In 1908, he replaces the poet Endre Ady, who had left for Paris, as a reporter for a Budapest daily. In 1910, his first volume of poems The Complaints of a Poor Little Child brought nationwide success and marked the beginning of a prolific period in which he published a book nearly every year. In 1936, he died from cancer of the palate. The literary journal Nyugat (Hungarian for "West"), which played an invaluable role in the revitalization of Hungarian literature, was founded in 1908 and Kosztolanyi was an early contributor, part of what is often called the "first Nyugat generation", publishing mainly in poetry. Starting in the 1920s he wrote novels, short stories, and short prose works, including Nero, the Bloody Poet (to the German edition of which Thomas Mann wrote the introduction), Skylark, The Golden Kite and Anna edes. In 1924 he published a volume of verse harkening back to his early work, entitled The Complaints of the Sad Man. Kosztolanyi also produced literary translations in Hungarian, such as (from English, at least) Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", "The Winter's Tale", Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland", Thornton Wilder's "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", Lord Alfred Douglas' memoirs on Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling's "If—". He was the first authentic translator of Rilke's poetry, and he worked a Hungarian masterpiece after Paul Valery's "Cimetiere Marin".