observation and discussion. The Realists purported to create a school of "applied literature". The ultimate goal of the school was, first, exact and almost photographic delineation of the accidents of modern life, and secondly, non-suppression of the essential features and functions of that life which are usually suppressed. Jakov Ignjatović, Djordje Rajković (who collaborated with Ignjatović in 1885 and 1886 on a magazine called Bršljan) and Svetozar Marković belonged to this movement. Ignjatović was elected a member of the Serbian Royal Academy in 1888. At the end of life, possibly as a result of deteriorating health, he lost most of his fortune and died as a vagrant in Novi Sad in 1899. Works Ignjatović did not hesitate to draw largely on his own personal adventures and profess to portray human life, not as a fairy-tale, but as "stuff on which to try the soul's strength." Among Jakov Ignjatović's best novels are Vasa Rešpekt (Basil the Respectable), Večiti Mladoženja (The Eternal Groom), Patnica (A Burdened Woman), Trpen Spašen (The Suffered Saved), and Milan Nerandžić. All these novels form a prominent landmark in the development of Serbian prose fiction. The plots of Ignjatović's novels are ingenious in conception and skillfully crafted. He has no pretensions to the brilliance of Gogol (with whom he's been often compared), but his amusing dialogue arises naturally out of the situation, and its wit is never strained. Vasa Rešpekt (1875) opens with a praise of the town of Szentandre, the location in which this story is framed. The hero of the embedded story, Vasa Ognjan, leaves the town early, lives most of his life in perpetual poverty, and gets into conflict with the authorities, but distinguishes himself as somewhat of a daredevil in battles. In 1848, he fights on the Hungarian side, though not out of political conviction, and he asks to be transferred when he is supposed to fight his fellow Serbs. If Vasa Rešpekt is a romantic story revolving around an identity crisis, Večiti mladoženja (1878) is a humorous story about two generations of Szendendre Serbs. The first describes in great detail the preparation and departure of a well-to-do merchant on a trip to Cracow fair of 1812; the second part is focused on his no-good sons who fight among themselves for the inheritance and finally waste it. His characters are original, and the unexpected incidents and adventures in which they are mixed up are