In Literature
Susan Sontag's award-winning 1999 novel, In America, though fiction, is based on Modjeska's life. The book precipitated a controversy when Sontag was accused of having plagiarized other works about Modjeska.
Modjeska was a character in the novella My Mortal Enemy, by Willa Cather.
Scholars Joanna and Catharina Polatynska have posited that Modjeska might have been Arthur Conan Doyle's model for the character Irene Adler, the only woman that Sherlock Holmes came close to loving. In "A Scandal in Bohemia", Doyle mentions Adler having been prima donna of the fictional Imperial Opera of Warsaw in the same years when Modjeska was at the peak of her theatrical career in Warsaw, and the fictional character's personality recalls that of the actual actress.
Read more about this topic: Helena Modjeska
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