Vojislav Ilić was later recognized as the preeminent poet of his day; Milutin, Dragutin and Žarko wrote books and were well known in their own right.

from Turkish-occupied Serbian territories who studied abroad, and returned home bringing the European ideals of democracy, constitutionalism, nationalism, Pan-Slavism, and civil liberties.

The association was modeled after revolutionary and literary youth organizations of the past two or three decades (since the founding of Matica srpska in Budapest in 1825).

[1] They played an important role in the St. Andrew's Day Assembly in 1858 when the call for a parliamentary check on monarchic power for the first time gained support.

The generation of liberals in Serbia, which emerged in the late-1840s and 1850s, believed that individual freedom and the 'progress of the nation' could be secured through the institution of parliamentary representation.