This volume contains essays on Dobrovský, the pioneer of Czech language studies, and on Palacký, the author of the first great national history, as well as on other facets of literary history which have influenced national feeling.

Peter Brock (1920-2006) was a member of the Department of History at the University of Toronto. He is author of The Slovak National Awakening, and co-editor, with H. Gordon Skilling, of The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century.

H. Gordon Skilling (1912-2001) studied at the University of Toronto (BA), Oxford (BA, MA), and the University of London School of Slavonic and East European Studies (PH D). He worked in Czechoslovakia from 1937 to 1939 as a commentator on North America for the Czechoslovak Radio Corporation. He taught at the universities of Manitoba and Wisconsin and at Dartmouth College and was Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto.