He also read the noted Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya by Paisius of Hilendar, and later studied in Svishtov (under Emanuil Vaskidovich), extended his knowledge of Greek and got acquainted with the works of Western European and Serbian literature.

He established himself as arguably the most famous Bulgarian writer in Istanbul in the time, issued more than 60 books, newspapers and magazines, both original and translated.

He was arrested for the article Dvete kasti i vlasti in the Makedoniya newspaper and accused of relations with the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee in Bucharest.

After the Liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1878, Slaveykov struggled for a democratic constitution together with Petko Karavelov as a deputy in the first Grand National Assembly, became the Chairman of the National Assembly of Bulgaria in 1880, Minister of the Enlightenment and the Internal Affairs (1880-1881), issued the newspapers Osten (1879), Tselokupna Balgariya (1879), Nezavisimost (1880-1883), Tarnovska konstitutsiya (1884), Istina (1886), Sofiyski dnevnik (1886) and Pravda (1888).

He wrote patriotic songs and poems, and love and landscape lyric poetry under the influence of Russian poets Aleksandr Pushkin, Afanasy Fet and Nikolay Karamzin.

Parts of his historical patriotic poems likely influenced by Paisius' Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya have been preserved: Krumiada, Kralev Marko, Samuilka, Gergana.

He printed Balgarski pritchi, poslovitsi i harakterni dumi, researched the Bulgarian customs, ritual system, demonology and psychology, and wrote under many pseudonyms.