quality:correction
Early life

Sienkiewicz was born on 5 May 1846 in Wola Okrzejska, now a village in the central part of the eastern Polish region of Lubelskie, then part of the Russian Empire. His family were impoverished Polish nobles, on his father's side deriving from Tatars who had settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His parents were Józef Sienkiewicz of the Oszyk coat of arms and Stefania Cieciszowska. His mother descended from an old and affluent Podlachian family. He had five siblings: an older brother, Kazimierz (who died during January Uprising of 1863–1864), and four sisters: Aniela, Helena, Zofia and Maria. His family were entitled to use the Polish Oszyk coat of arms. Wola Okrzejska belonged to the writer's maternal grandmother, Felicjana Cieciszowska. His family moved several times, and young Henryk spent his childhood on family estates in Grabowce Górne, Wężyczyn and Burzec. In September 1858 he began his education in Warsaw, where the family would finally settle in 1861, having bought a tenement house (kamienica) in eastern Warsaw's Praga district. He received relatively poor school-grades except in the humanities, notably Polish language and history.

Due to hard times, the 19-year-old Sienkiewicz took a job as tutor to the Weyher family in Płońsk. It was probably in this period that he wrote his first novel, Ofiara (Sacrifice); he is thought to have destroyed the manuscript of the never-published novel. He also worked on his first novel to be published, Na marne (In Vain). He completed extramural secondary-school classes, and in 1866 he received his secondary-school diploma. He first tried to study medicine, then law, at the Imperial University of Warsaw, but he soon transferred to the university's Institute of Philology and History, where he acquired a thorough knowledge of literature and Old Polish Language. Little is known about this period of his life, other than that he moved out of his parents' home, tutored part-time, and lived in poverty. His situation improved somewhat in 1868 when he became a tutor to the princely Woroniecki family.

In 1867 he wrote a rhymed piece, " Sielanka Młodości " ("Idyll of Youth"), which was rejected by Tygodnik Illustrowany (The Illustrated Weekly). In 1869 he debuted as a journalist; Przegląd Tygodniowy (1866–1904) (The Weekly Review) ran his review of a play on 18 April 1869, and shortly afterward The Illustrated Weekly printed an essay of his about the late-Renaissance Polish poet Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński. He completed his university studies in 1871, though he failed to receive a diploma because he did not pass the examination in Greek language. Sienkiewicz also wrote for Gazeta Polska (The Polish Gazette) and Niwa (magazine), under the pen name "Litwos". In 1873 he began writing a column, "Bez tytułu " ("Without a title"), in The Polish Gazette; in 1874 a column, " Sprawy bieżące " ("Current matters") for Niwa; and in 1875 the column, " Chwila obecna " ("The present moment"). He also collaborated on a Polish translation, published in 1874, of Victor Hugo 's last novel, Ninety-Three. In June that year he became co-owner of Niwa (in 1878, he would sell his share in the magazine).

Meanwhile, in 1872, he had debuted as a fiction writer with his short novel Na marne (In Vain), published in the magazine Wieniec (Garland). This was followed by Humoreski z teki Woroszyłły (Humorous Sketches from Woroszyłła's Files, 1872), Stary Sługa (The Old Servant, 1875), Hania (Sienkiewicz) (1876) and Selim Mirza (1877). The last three are known as the "Little Trilogy". These publications made him a prominent figure in Warsaw's journalistic-literary world, and a guest at popular dinner parties hosted by the actress Helena Modrzejewska.