„My Books are my Sons” The library of Mihály Vitkovics

„My Books are my Sons” The library of Mihály Vitkovics

„My Books are my Sons” The library of Mihály Vitkovics
Prepared and edited by Klára Csepregi and Kálmán Bor

NSZL–Gondolat Publishing House, Budapest, 2013., 290 pages
[National Collection, series edited by László Boka and Ferenc Kégli]

ISBN 978 963 200 617 8

Language: 
Hungarian
2 900,- Ft
Available

Mihály Vitkovics (1778–1829), of Serbian descent, was a renowned attorney of his time, a Hungarian poet and an outstanding personality of both the Hungarian and Serbian history of literature. He wrote poems, theatre plays and essays in Hungarian (these latter describing mainly the customs and life of Serbians), and also translated Hungarian works into Serbian.

He had regular correspondence with the leading figure of the Hungarian language reform movement Ferenc Kazinczy and also with István Horvát and Pál Szemere, his two fellows to found the Kazinczy “Triad of Pest” to support Kazinczy’s endeavor. As a matter of fact, one of the starting points of the struggle for reforming the Hungarian language was a poem by Kazinczy addressed to Vitkovics who was one of the founding members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Purchasing books to acquire knowledge of contemporary literature and natural sciences was a real passion for Vitkovics. His library of 1077 items can now be browsed by readers and researchers for the first time in this volume that presents the reconstructed index of books added to the list of the Vitkovics legacy. The library is a remarkable episode in the history of Hungarian private libraries both for its size and linguistic variety. Vitkovics spoke Hungarian, Serbian, German and Latin, and could read ancient and modern Greek, Russian, French and Italian.

At the beginning if the 19th century, the work of Mihály Vitkovics and his fellows set an example for the relation and cooperation between Serbian and Hungarian cultures.

National Collection

National Collection is a joint book series of National Széchényi Library and Gondolat Publishing House that started in 2010 with the purpose of continuing the previous series National Széchényi Library Publications (Országos Széchényi Könyvtár Kiadványai) and National Széchényi Library Booklets (Országos Széchényi Könyvtár Füzetei), keeping their values alive. It is a collection of publications on history of culture, press, books, library and library informatics that all relate to the Hungarian national library or its collections. Apart from studies and conference materials, National Collection also publishes special bibliografies and catalogues based upon the Hungarica resources at NSZL, providing help for the further research of Hungarian culture history.