Novelist, Actress, Gabriela Zapolska was a Polish novelist and actress from the end of the 19th into the 20th century, who used the pseudonym of Maria G. Sniezzko-Bllocka. A prolific author, she wrote 41 plays, 23 novels, 177 short stories, 253 journalistic pieces and one film script. She was actually born in Podhajce, Austria-Hungary, which is now Pidhaytsiuk, Ukraine. Her mother was a ballerina and opera singer and her father a wealthy landowner. Starting in 1879, her life as an actress was never successful in Poland or in France where she lived for a while. After receiving many bad reviews, she ultimately left the career, becoming very depressed to the point of attempting suicide in October of 1988. After some time in France, she returned to Lviv, which was at the time in Poland and began to write. She wrote a couple of unsuccessful plays and was a theater critic for a newspaper. Cheaply, she published books for the middle-class to read for entertainment and for her income. Of her many works, only two remain readable in the 21st century, "The Forest Will Murmur" in 1899 and "Love in the Season" in 1905. Other works include many socio-satirical comedies such as "Moralnosscc pani Dulskiej" ("Mrs. Dulska's Morality" in 1897), "Ich czworo" ("The Four of Them" in 1907), "Zabusia" in 1897, and "Panna Maliczewska" ("Miss Maliczewska" in 1910). Her novels include: "Kasska Kariatyda" ("Cathy the Caryatid" in 1885-1886, a feminist classic), and "Z pamieetników mllodej meezzatki" ("Memoirs of a Young Wife"). In 1902 Zapolska ran a drama school in Kraków. Starting about 1910, she traveled around quite a bit but when World War I began, she stayed in Lviv, where she ran a small pastry shop. In 1912, Zapolska participated in the Exhibition of Polish Women's Work in Prague. She married twice. Her family forced her to marry in 1876 a Russian military officer, Lt. Konstanty Śniez̊ko-Błocki but the marriage was annulled in 1888. By 1879, she had left the officer to start an acting career. She married second to the artist Stanisław Janowski, but this marriage failed in 1904. She had at least one child in 1881. She suffered throughout her life from tuberculosis.