The Life and Glorious Deeds of Peter the Great, Zahariah Orfelin, 1772. B10376

The Life and Glorious Deeds of Peter the Great, Zahariah Orfelin, 1772. B10376

From the Land of the South Slavs... Published in Vienna, this calendar of the world's happenings from its beginnings uses the Russian civil alphabet, introduced to the Russians by Peter The Great. The author, Serbian school teacher, writer, historian, and civil servant Zahariah Orfelin used it to write mostly patriotic Serbian and religious poems in Russian Slavonic, even as he touted the Serbian vernacular as the preferred language for his country's literature. His Serbian nationalism – or rather his desire for Serbia's freedom from the Turks – did not deter him from singing Peter's praises in The life and glorious deeds of Peter The Great, in 1772.

B10376