In time, Prus adopted the French Positivist critic Hippolyte Taine's concept of the arts, including literature, as a second means, alongside the sciences, of studying reality, and he devoted more attention to his sideline of short-story writer. Prus's stories, which met with great acclaim, owed much to the literary influence of Polish novelist Józef Ignacy Kraszewski and, among English-language writers, to Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. His fiction was also influenced by French writers Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Alphonse Daudet and Émile Zola.
