Jagoda Truhelka

Jagoda Truhelka (; 5 February 1864 – 17 December 1957) was a Croatian novelist and pedagogue. A native of Slavonia, Truhelka worked as teacher and headmistress in Osijek, Zagreb, Gospić, Banja Luka, and Sarajevo. Her novels are notable for focusing on female characters and discussing women's rights, but Truhelka is best known for her children's literature.

Family and education Truhelka was born on 5 February 1864 in Osijek, capital of the Kingdom of Slavonia, Austrian Empire. She was the eldest of three children of Marija (née Schön) and Antun Vjenceslav Truhelka. Her parents were both immigrants to Slavonia; her father, a teacher, was a Czech, and her mother was a Danube Swabian. She attended a gymnasium in Osijek. After her father's death in 1878, Truhelka moved to Zagreb, now capital of the new Austro-Hungarian Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, with her mother and younger brothers, Dragoš and Ćiro Truhelka.

Truhelka continued her education in Zagreb, intending to follow in her father's footsteps. She received her teacher's diploma in 1882.

In 1901, Truhelka moved to Banja Luka, in the Austro-Hungarian-occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina, where she worked as a girls' school headmistress for ten years. During her subsequent work as teacher in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina's capital, Truhelka was particularly active in promoting women's rights. She published a dozen novellas, several short stories, and two novels. In 1900, Jagoda Truhelka and Marija Jambrišak launched the magazine Domaće ognjište (The Home Hearth), which attracted significant contribution from other women writers. Antun Gustav Matoš said that the magazine was of "inestimable importance" because it was "not only a pedagogical paper but also a women's paper".

As her early prose revolved around women and the relations between the sexes, Truhelka published a part of her stories in the magazines Vienac and Nada under the pseudonym A. M. Sandučić. Truhelka's Vojača is highly sensible, vulnerable and thoughtful, and the first antiheroine in Croatian literature. The novel, in which she follows both traditional and modernist approaches, reveals that Truhelka was inspired by August Šenoa.

Children's literature Later in her career, as the modernism faded, Truhelka focused on children's literature, which often contained autobiographical elements. Zlatni danci was published in 1918. Upon her retirement in August 1923, Truhelka returned to Zagreb, by then the second largest city of Yugoslavia, and withdrew from public life. She continued her work on children's literature into advanced old age. Bogorodičine trešnje and Crni i bijeli dani were published in 1929 and 1944 respectively. These two, along with Zlatni danci, place her among the most prominent Croatian children's writers, second only to Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. Portraying the everyday lives of children, Truhelka strived to include ethical, religious and patriotic lessons.

In her retirement, Truhelka rarely made reference to women's rights and notable women. She died in Zagreb on 17 December 1957, aged 93. She remains best known for her children's literature.