One of the most prominent and versatile figures in twentieth-century Lithuanian literature, Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas was not only a leading poet of his generation but also a novelist who introduced the psychological genre into Lithuanian fiction. He was highly regarded as a dramatist and short-story writer as well, and he was also one of the foremost Lithuanian literary historians between the two world wars.

Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas was born on 6 January 1893 in Pilotiskes in the county of Marijampole, where he studied at the elite secondary school. His parents, Jouzas Mykolaitis and Magdalena Garbule-Mykolaitiene, both of whom were extremely religious, owned their own farm, and Mykolaitis-Putinas had three brothers and two sisters. In 1909 he continued his studies in the Theological Seminary in Seinai. Since the use of Lithuanian was forbidden in higher education, the seminarians undertook to study the Lithuanian language, literature, and history clandestinely. At the beginning of World War...