Writing this article gave me great pleasure, because it goes just about clever, interesting and a great person, and my colleague. Ivan Yakovlevich Franco was not only a poet, novelist, playwright, translator, critic, literary historian, politician and public figure, but the editor, publisher and journalist. He was born August 27 1856. in the village Nahuyevychi (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in the family of a village blacksmith. Attended the village school, gymnasium Drohobych.

Already in the fifth grade school Franco began to collect its own library. Upon graduation, there were about 500 books, including collections of works of Homer, Socrates, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Scott, Goethe, Mickiewicz, Dumas, Heine, and many other classics. Frank continued education at the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Lvov. Exactly one year after the first collection of works by Ivan Yakovlevich was arrested. Over the next 12 years, he was arrested twice more. Because Franco was not just a writer. His goal was to create a Ukrainian political nation.

As he wrote to Ivan Yakovlevich, "I held various stages of development, worked very different job, he served various directions, and even nations, because it had to work a lot, but our Ukrainian, and Polish, German and Russian. But everywhere and always, I had one thought – to serve the interests of my people and the universal progressive, humane ideas. " Political views during the life of Frank changed from the youthful enthusiasm of socialism and federalism Drahomanov to conscious service to the idea of building the cathedral of the Ukrainian state. Ivan Yakovlevich was an active political and scientific activities. Together with M. Pavlik founded the journal "Public Friend". Worked extensively in the scientific community name Shevchenko headed his ethnographic Commission, edited "The ethnographic collection." He participated in the writing of the magazine "Literary and Scientific Bulletin." Not released a collection of works. But because of his political activities aimed at the independence of Ukraine, failed to get a scientific position at the Lviv University. And the elections for the appropriation of the title of academician Ivan Franko Petersburg's Academy of Sciences have been banned by the government Russian Empire. Over the years, took part in the elections to the Polish Sejm, but the administration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through fraud Franco did not allow the parliament. Continuous intellectual and artistic work Franco in various sorts and genres: poetry collections, novels, novellas, short stories, plays, translations, articles – have changed the face of Ukrainian culture, enriched and ennobled it. His contribution to the national revival in Ukraine is invaluable.