Jakov Ignjatović (, 8 December 1822 – 5 July 1889) was a novelist and prose writer, who primarily wrote in Serbian but also in Hungarian. He was also an active member of Matica Srpska. Biography Jakov Ignjatović was born in Szentendre on 8 December 1822. He finished elementary school in Szentendre and studied at the Gymnasium in Vác, Esztergom and Pest. He enrolled in Law School at Pest, but left the university and joined the hussars. Later, he graduated law in Kecskemét, where he started his law practice in 1847 for a short time, but during the Hungarian revolution of 1848 in a Romantic fervor, he joined Hungarian forces in fighting against the Austrians, in contradiction to what most Serbs and Croats in Austria of the time did, siding with the empire. He was briefly arrested when the revolution was suppressed. After the Hungarian defeat, Ignjatović fled to Belgrade. There he worked as a journalist till 1850, and later, he traveled the world. He returned to Hungary in 1853 and took an active part in the cultural and political life of Serbs in Vojvodina. His efforts to secure equal educational privileges for the Slav and Romanian nationalities in the Austrian dominions brought him into disfavor with the German element. He was successively editor of "Letopis Matice srpske" (Serbian Annals), the "Srpske novine" (Serbian News), and the "Nedeljni list" (Weekend Magazine), between 1854 and 1856, and worked as a clerk in Sremski Karlovci and Novi Sad. He joined Svetozar Miletić's People's Party in its political fight against Austria and was a member of the Hungarian diet twice. After the People's Party split with Hungary, he remained loyal to the Hungarian authorities, like Janos Damjanich and Sebo Vukovics, and unlike the majority of the Serbs living in Vojvodina. And because of that, Ignjatović was seen as a traitor by his compatriots, and lived in isolation until death. This had a bad influence on his writing career, but he still managed to leave a literary legacy behind him just the same (among the Hungarians and Serbs alike). Ignjatović turned to novel writing rather late in life, perhaps influenced by the second half of the nineteenth century, then under the domination of science. Like most writers of the day, he sought to utilize as much as possible the facts and theories of science and to make the novel or drama an instrument of scientific