[3] The main goals are to restore and promote Serbian national and cultural identity in the fields of art, science, spiritual creativity, economy and public life as well as to care for social development of Serbia.

[6][7] One of the most important tasks facing the Serbs, in advancing cultural-national rebirth, was the solution of the literary language problem, and, as a result of the first fifty years of the 19th century, saw the Vojvodina Serbs engaged in an intense debate about the kind of literary language that their newly revitalized, emerging nation should adopt.

In addition to books, it published the journal Serbski letopis, founded two years earlier by Georgije Magarašević,[9] Pavel Jozef Šafárik, and Lukijan Mušicki in Novi Sad, where Magarašević was professor and Šafárik the director of Novi Sad's Serbian Gymnasium.

The story of the Matica Srpska actually began in 1824,[2] when the Austrian authorities permitted writer Georgije Magarašević, a professor at a gymnasium in the town of Novi Sad, to publish a literary and scholarly journal entitled "Serbski letopis" ("Serbian Annals").

In time, the writers and editors of the publication developed into a learned society, successfully overcoming pressures applied by mistrustful Austrian officials as well as later financial difficulties.

In 1838, a wealthy Serb landowner, Sava Tekelija, left the Matica a legacy to support Serbian students at the University of Pest and a college named after him, Tekelijanum (Tokolyanum in Hungarian).

The Hungarian authorities were suspicious of the Matica and even suspended its activities in 1835–1836 for alleged pan-Slavism, but they resisted Serb efforts to move the institution to Novi Sad.

[13] The Law of the Matica Srpska Society (1986) regulates matters of endowment and legacy, given by the national benefactors, and how money is spent for various cultural and educational purposes.