Prus was by profession an extremely productive and highly influential journalist, who won fame with his Weekly Chronicles, short pieces on diverse subjects. His work in fiction began with short stories, usually about the Warsaw poor. His first novel, The Outpost (1886), deals with village life, focusing in particular on the mechanism of German settlement in Polish lands. In The Doll (1890), Prus creates an enormous rich canvas of Warsaw life, into which he weaves the story of his hero, Wokulski, and his doomed passion for the aristocratic Isabella. His third major novel, The Pharaoh (1895--96), is set in eleventh-century b.c. Egypt and deals with the unsuccessful struggle of a young pharaoh… against the dominant priestly class.