Ivan Trnski

Ivan Trnski (1 May 1819 – 30 June 1910[1]) was a Croatian writer, translator and puzzle designer.

Trnski wrote patriotic, occasional and popular songs (Oh The Long Nights of Autumn), poems (the collections Pjesme krijesnice and Popijevke i milosnice mladenke) and short stories (Slutljivac (The Seer), arguably the first work of supernatural fiction in Croatian).

He translated from English, German, Russian and Czech (Shakespeare, Schiller, and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin).

His essay On Writing Verses (Vijenac, 1874) earned him the popular title of the "Father of Croatian Metrics".

The modern literary historians consider him a skilful (but not great) poet and a prolific author of occasional verses.