Eliza Orzeszkowa (6 June 1841 – 18 May 1910) was a Polish novelist and a leading writer[1] of the Positivism movement during foreign Partitions of Poland.

[2] Orzeszkowa wrote a series of 30 novels and 120 powerful sketches, dramas and novellas, dealing with the social conditions of her occupied country.

Her novel Eli Makower (1875) describes the relations between the Jews and the Polish nobility; and Meir Ezofowicz (1878), the conflict between Jewish orthodoxy and modern liberalism.

[4] In 1888 Orzeszkowa wrote two novels about the Niemen River (now part of Belarus): Cham (The Boor) focused on the life of fishermen; and her most famous novel, Nad Niemnem (On the Niemen)—often compared to Pan Tadeusz—dealing with the issues of Polish aristocracy against the backdrop of political and social order.

In 1978, a biographical film titled Ty pójdziesz górą... devoted to Orzeszkowa was directed by Zygmunt Skonieczny with Hanna Maria Giza portraying the novelist.