Mikalojaus Akelaičio rankraščio 'Opisanie Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego' (1862) istorija ; Story of Mikalojus Akelaitis's manuscript 'Opisanie Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego' (1862)

It was Urbšienė, who contributed most to finally producing Akelaitis's most detailed biography and establishing contacts with his descendants. So already in the third decade of the 20t h century Lithuanian historians showed that OWKL had not only been Akelaitis's work of history largest in scale, but also his most significant manuscript kept in the BPP. However, neither Janulaitis, nor other researchers made efforts to transcribe OWKL or even take pictures of it and find a way to send the pictures to Lithuania. Janulaitis and other Lithuanians who lived in pre-war Paris and helped him were rather indifferent; their indifference passed to other generations of researchers: a xerox copy of the work was only brought to the Institute of Lithuanian History in Vilnius in 1995. there have been very few mentions of OWKL in the press either. t h e first article about the work was published in 1924. Its author was Galaunė. After a rather long break almost the same information from time to time (1965, 1969, 1981 and 1995) appeared in different research publications. It was mostly a shorter or longer version of Galaunė's description of the manuscript structure and a couple of commentaries. Only in 1996 a more detailed article by the Polish literary critic Mieczysław Jackiewicz was published. However, his rather short essay appeared in a non-research publication. None of the researchers of OWKL has focused on its genesis, which seems to be a logical outcome of Akelaitis's biography: the idea of the work was brought from Lithuania; however, the work was carried out in the BPP, which provided excellent conditions and gave access to numerous sources. The date of the work, 1862, also prompted the idea that the work could only be analysed in the context of his research carried out in Vilnius. In general, OWKL can hardly be compared to any of Akelaitis's works completed in Lithuania.