Abstract
The article reveals the early period of work of Petro Franko (1890–1941) as a representative of the literary Franko dynasty (the youngest son of Ivan Franko). The exploration is based on historical-documentary searches, in particular archival and library. The scientific novelty of the exploration lies in consideration of Petro Franko’s travel essays , which for a long time were out of the attention of researchers due to the prohibition the figure of Ivan Franko’s son in Soviet literary studies. Petro Franko’s life was cut short by the totalitarian Stalinist regime and in consequence of his works were overlooked by researchers. The main attention is focused on the consideration of travel (traveling) essays appeared in the works of Peter Franko as a result of his passion for sports and tourism. The peculiarities of new thematic genre types of essays and reports are clarified: ski essays and ski reports (from the English ski – skiing). A significant number of texts on the topic of skiing in his work and their cross-cutting content and poetic features give the right to claim about Petro Franko’s complete ski text as a phenomenon of sports and travel literature and journalism. The corpus of texts united by the topos of mountains is also taken into consideration. Ivan Franko’s love for traveling in Pidgirya and Chornagora, attached to his children, was also reflected in the work of his son Petro. It is asserted that the son continued and developed the mountain (in particular the Carpathians) text of his father (in his Boykivsko-Pidgirnyi and Hutsulsko-Verkhovynskyi variations). Peter Franko’s travel essays enriched the mountain (Carpathian) text of Ukrainian literature.