A collection of the literary and scholarly correspondence of superintendent János Kis (1770-1846) has been published by Ludovika University Press. The volume was edited by Kálmán Tóth, junior researcher of our Institute.
János Kis (1770-1846) was a Hungarian writer, poet, translator, Lutheran pastor and superintendent, a royal counsel, ordinary member of the Hungarian Learned Society (the predecessor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), who played an important role in the literary, ecclesiastical and scholarly life of his times. As the „discoverer” of the great Hungarian classical poet Dániel Berzsenyi (1776-1836), his name is included in the syllabus of secondary-school literary education. His vast correspondence is an important source of interdisciplinary historical research of the intellectual life of the period, as he cultivated personal connections with many outstanding contemporary writers, scholars and public personalities. This volume is the first attempt to comprehensively chart his correspondence and present a collected edition of it to the public.
Most of the letters included in the volume appear in print for the first time. The current critical edition is of great interest not just for scholarly researchers of the period, but also for every educated reader interested in the intellectual life of the Hungarian Enlightenment and Reform Age.