[3] Makuszyński was born in Stryj in the Austrian Partition of Poland (now in Ukraine) to Edward and Julia née Ogonowska.

[4] Makuszyński had his first poem published in 1902 in the newspaper Słowo Polskie (Polish Word), for which he soon became a theatrical critic.

His children's books, particularly the series about the goat, Koziołek Matołek, illustrated by Marian Walentynowicz, have an enduring popularity in Poland, whatever the sharp changes in the country's fortunes and its political system.

Among others, they are very popular in Israel, where Polish Jewish immigrants since the 1920s and 1930s took care to have many of them translated into Hebrew and introduced them to their own children.

Makuszyński was temporarily blacklisted right after World War II by his chief rival at the Polish Academy of Literature and later, communist apparatchik Wincenty Rzymowski, a plagiarist.