Emil Antoni Korytko was a Polish political activist in the period of the Great Emigration, who was exiled to Ljubljana, Carniola and became an important ethnographer, philologist and translator there. His legacy are collections of Slovene folk songs and vivid descriptions of Carniolan folk customs. He significantly contributed to the mutual dialogue between Polish and Slovene authors and readers.

The Great Emigration was the emigration of thousands of Poles and Lithuanians, particularly from the political and cultural élites, from 1831 to 1870, after the failure of the November Uprising of 1830–1831 and of other uprisings such as the Kraków uprising of 1846 and the January Uprising of 1863–1864. The emigration affected almost the entirety of political elite in Congress Poland. The exiles included artists, soldiers and officers of the uprising, members of the Sejm of Congress Poland of 1830–1831 and several prisoners-of-war who escaped from captivity.