The Serbian Literary Guild (, SKZ) is Serbia's oldest writers' association and the second-oldest publishing house after Matica srpska.
History It was founded in Belgrade on 29 April 1892 in the no longer existing building of the Royal Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts by sixteen prominent people of the cultural, scientific and political life of that time. Since its inception, the traditional institution has edited works by both Serbian and international authors and finally contributed to promotion and dissemination of Serbian and other translated world's literature. The traditional corporation has thus made an important contribution to the Serbian cultural life for more than a century. The cooperative's coat of arms was designed by Jovan Jovanović Zmaj.The Serbian Literary Cooperative, A brief historical overview (PDF, in English) on the Official Website by Srpska književna zadruga, retrieved on 2017-10-25.Report on the 125th anniversary on the Website by RTS, retrieved on 2017-10-26.Lex specialis за Српску књижевну задругу (Lex specialis for the Serbian Literary Cooperative), Article by Politika of 25 April 2017, retrieved on 2017-10-26.
During the Kingdom of Serbia the Guild had 11,000 members in Serbia and the Balkans and operated as a major publishing house, but its actual role was that of an educational institution that carefully fostered national culture and ideas of South-Slavic unity as well. The Guild translated numerous Greek and Roman classics as well as French literature of the time. Their works were smuggled in Slavic provinces under Austrian rule, as the Austrian authorities considered the works to be liberally and nationally charged.
Among the numerous publications of the Literary Cooperative can be found many translated works of international writers such as Jorge Amado, Ludovico Ariosto, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Beaumarchais, Lord Byron, Luís Vaz de Camões, Albert Camus, Geoffrey Chaucer, Paul Claudel, James Fenimore Cooper, Alphonse Daudet, Charles Dickens, Charles Diehl, Maurice Druon, George Eliot, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Euripides, Richard J. Evans, William Faulkner, Gustave Flaubert, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Goldsmith, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Peter Handke, Thomas Hardy, Ludwik Hirszfeld, Victor Hugo, Aldous Huxley, Henry James, Franz Kafka, Søren Kierkegaard, Rudyard Kipling, David Lodge, Thomas Babington Macaulay, André Malraux, Christopher Marlowe, Herman Melville, Prosper Mérimée, Molière, Eugene O’Neill, Joyce Carol Oates, Edgar Allan Poe, France Prešeren, Francisco de Quevedo, Rainer Maria Rilke, Isak Samokovlija, Friedrich von Schiller, Arthur Schnitzler, Albert Schweitzer, Walter Scott, William Shakespeare, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Stendhal, Hippolyte Taine, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, François Villon, Virgil, Oscar Wilde and Thomas Wolfe.Catalogue of National Library of Serbia, retrieved on 2017-10-26.
Presidents Stojan Novaković, 1892—1895 Ljubomir Kovačević, 1895—1898 Pera Đorđević, 1898—1902 Ljubomir Stojanović, 1902—1904 Ljubomir Jovanović, 1904—1906 Dobroslav Ružić, 1906—1908 Stojan Novaković, 1908—1915 Sreta Stojković, 1920—1928 Pavle Popović, 1928—1937 Marko Car, 1937—1941 Tihomir Đorđević, 1941—1942 Veljko Petrović, 1945—1952 Miloš N. Đurić, 1952—1957 Vojislav Đurić, 1957—1961 Milan Đoković, 1961—1962 Svetislav Đurić, 1962—1966 Milan Đoković, 1966—1969 Dobrica Ćosić, 1969—1972 Risto Tošović, 1973—1986 Radovan Samardžić, 1988—1994 Branko V. Radičević, 1995—1997 Novica Petković, 1997—1999 Milisav Savić, 2000—2001 Slavenko Terzić, 2001—2005 Slobodan Rakitić, 2005—2013 Milovan Danojlić, 2013–Predsednici (Председници) on the Official Website by Srpska književna zadruga retrieved on 2017-10-25.
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