Termasuk seorang tokoh utama dalam Romantisisme Polandia, ia merupakan salah satu dari "Tiga Penyair" (Trzej Wieszcze) Polandia[3] dan secara luas dianggap sebagai penyair besar Polandia.[4][5][6] Dia juga dianggap sebagai salah satu penyair Slavia[7] dan Eropa[8] yang besar dan telah dijuluki sebagai "penyair Slavia".[9] Seorang dramawan Romantis,[10] ia telah dibandingkan di Polandia dan Eropa dengan Byron dan Goethe.[9][10]
Mickiewicz lahir di wilayah yang dipartisi Rusia dari mantan Keharyapatihan Lithuania, yang telah menjadi bagian dari Persemakmuran Polandia-Lituania, dan aktif dalam perjuangan untuk memenangkan kemerdekaan bagi daerah rumahnya. Sebagai konsekuensinya, ia menghabiskan lima tahun diasingkan ke Rusia tengah, pada tahun 1829 ia berhasil meninggalkan Kekaisaran Rusia, dan seperti banyak rekannya, menghabiskan sisa hidup di luar negeri. Pertama, dia menetap di Roma, kemudian di Paris, di mana selama kurang lebih tiga tahun ia mengajar sastra Slavia di Collège de France. Dia meninggal di Istanbul di Kesultanan Utsmaniyah, di mana ia pergi untuk membantu mengatur pasukan Polandia dan Yahudi untuk melawan Rusia dalam Perang Krimea.
a^Czesław Miłosz and Kazimierz Wyka each note that Adam Mickiewicz's exact birthplace cannot be ascertained due to conflicting records and missing documentation.[11][12]
Krzyżanowski, Julian, ed. (1986). Literatura polska: przewodnik encyklopedyczny, Volume 1: A–M. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. hlm.663–665. ISBN83-01-05368-2.
Adam Mickiewicz; Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America (1944). Poems by Adam Mickiewicz. The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America. hlm.63. Diakses tanggal 10 April 2013.
Wiktor Weintraub (1954). The poetry of Adam Mickiewicz. Mouton. hlm.11. Diakses tanggal 17 March 2013. Her (Barbara Mickiewicz) maiden name was Majewska. In old Lithuania, every baptised Jew became ennobled, and there were Majewskis of Jewish origin. That must have been the reason for the rumours, repeated by some of the poet's contemporaries, that Mickiewicz's mother was a Jewess by origin. However, genealogical research makes such an assumption rather improbable
"Mickiewicz's mother, descended from a converted Frankist family": "Mickiewicz, Adam," Encyclopaedia Judaica. "Mickiewicz's Frankist origins were well-known to the Warsaw Jewish community as early as 1838 (according to evidence in the AZDJ of that year, p. 362). "The parents of the poet's wife also came from Frankist families": "Frank, Jacob, and the Frankists," Encyclopaedia Judaica.
Czesław Milosz (22 May 2000). The Land of Ulro. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. hlm.116. ISBN978-0-374-51937-7. Diakses tanggal 17 March 2013. The mother's low social status—her father was a land steward—argues against a Frankist origin. The Frankists were usually of the nobility and therefore socially superior to the common gentry.
Studia Polonijne, Tomy 22–23, Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2001, page 266
Rybczonek, S., "Przodkowie Adama Mickiewicza po kądzieli" ("Adam Mickiewicz's Ancestors on the Distaff Side"), Blok-Notes Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza, 1999, no. 12/13.
Balaban, Meir, The History of the Frank Movement, 2 vols., 1934–35, pp.254–259.
Muzeum Adama Mickiewicza w Stambule (przewodnik). Ministerstwo Kultury i Turystyki Republiki Turcji – Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, 26 November 2005.
Jabłoński, Rafał (2002). Warsaw and surroundings. Warsaw: Festina. hlm.103. OCLC680169225. The Adam Mickiewicz Monument was unveiled in 1898 to mark the 100th anniversary of the great romantic poet's birth. The inscription on the base reads: "To the Poet from the Nation"
Venclova, Tomas. "Native Realm Revisited: Mickiewicz's Lithuania and Mickiewicz in Lithuania". Lituanus Volume 53, No 3 – Fall 2007. Diarsipkan dari asli tanggal 2015-02-22. Diakses tanggal 2007-04-24. This semantic confusion was amplified by the fact that the Nowogródek region, although inhabited mainly by Belarusian speakers, was for several centuries considered part and parcel of Lithuania Propria—Lithuania in the narrow sense; as different from the 'Ruthenian' regions of the Grand Duchy.