Zsigmond Beöthy was a member of the famous Beöthy family in Komárom, which produced many important personalities, and the father of the literary historian Zsolt Beöthy. His literary work, published in this volume, naturally lasts much longer than the chronological boundaries we have defined, and covers many more genres (for example, he was also a well-known poet to his contemporaries). Naturally, the period up to 1849 forms a separate unit in his career: this is not just an arbitrarily drawn boundary, but is highlighted by the fact that the author, who was otherwise still young, undertook to write his autobiography around this time. Since Beöthy himself paid attention to the border point of '49, we assigned to this text other pieces of Beöthy's work during the reform period, mostly those that he himself classified as worthy of mention in his autobiography: his newspaper articles and his drama, as well as his letters, which make up the very system of relationships visible, which he also outlines in his autobiography.