Maurycy Mochnacki (13 September 1803 in Bojaniec near Żółkiew – 20 December 1834 in Auxerre) was a Polish literary, theatre and music critic, publicist, journalist, pianist, historian and independence activist.

Maurycy Mochnacki was born in Bojaniec, which after the partitions of Poland became part of the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and is now western Ukraine.

At the end of 1823, he was arrested and imprisoned in a Carmelite Convent for belonging to a secret organization called ‘the Union of Free Polish Brothers’.

To get the freedom, he had to write a memorial in which he accused the education system in Congress Poland of political indoctrination of the youth and the advocacy of liberalism.

His family flat in Warsaw became a meeting place for Polish patriots, writers and musicians, such as Fryderyk Chopin or Maria Szymanowska.

At the time he started writing an essay titled 'On the Spirit and the Sources of poetry in Poland', in which he argued that a national literature could only grow from Romantic roots.

During the November Uprising he set up a political club, called the Patriotic Society and Mochnacki was once again was imprisoned for being against an insurrection's leader Józef Chłopicki.