Jaroslav Foglar (6 July 1907 – 23 January 1999) was a Czechoslovak writer who wrote many novels about youths (partly also about Boy Scouts movement) and their adventures in nature and dark city streets. His signature series is Rychlé šípy, which was adapted into comics by Jan Fischer. Early life Foglar was born in 1907 and grew up in Prague. Because his father died prematurely he was brought up in rather poor material conditions by his mother. To earn some extra money young Slavik used to copy the popular detective stories, cliftonky, earning 20 heller per copy. (This initially affected his literary style, and some of the first editions of his books were to be corrected later, to get rid of the literary slag.) He was strongly influenced by romantic parts of Prague. All of the fictional towns in his novels are more or less derived from Prague. During the 1920s, Foglar was strongly influenced by German independent Wandervogel movement as well as Scout movement led by Antonín Benjamin Svojsík under Czech name Junák. Writer and editor career, prohibited writer and the end of life During the 1930s and 1940s, Foglar worked as a magazine editor in one of the largest Prague publishing houses, Melantrich. He edited several journals for youths: Mladý hlasatel ("Young herald"), 1938–1941 Junák ("Scout"), 1945–1949 Vpřed ("Ahead"), 1946–1948 and he wrote articles for other journals including the Skaut, Sluníčko, ABC, and the Tramp. After the Communist coup in 1948 Foglar was kicked out of the publishing house, his magazines were liquidated and his books prohibited, as was the Scout movement and independent youth clubs. For many years he worked as a tutor in boarding schools and youth homes. During the fall of censorship at the end of the 1960s, he published some new books and re-editions of the older ones. After Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia his books were once again banned until 1989. Foglar lived with his mother caring for her until her death in high age and never married. Scout versus Youth Club movement Although Foglar worked as a Boy Scout leader, his relation to the Scout movement was not straightforward. He basically pictured the Boy Scouts only in few of his novels (especially Pod junackou vlajkou a Devadesatka pokracuje), preferring to write mostly about his own invention, the boy clubs. Foglar's idea of independent boy clubs is basically derived from German Wandervogel movement. As